Flying Ants are just.... Ants...

I've still to determine just what species of ant this is, but it would appear we've hit 'Flying Ant Season'. You can tell the season has arrived by the sudden arrival, for only a short time, of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of the little flying beasties; and the concurrent howling terror from the tabloid press about 'invasions' and warnings to keep windows closed.

Honestly. Google Flying Ants and the Daily Wail, Express, and all manner of local press buying in the same story, will try to grip you into a feeling of dread.

Here's the thing though. Flying ants are just... ants. Okay, some can sting, but hey, we have Clegs here (and in fact there's one in the extras, check out the psychedelic eyes!), and their bite is properly sore, both in the act and the aftermath.

Basically here's the ant lifecycle.

A queen sets up a colony, laying eggs which hatch into female workers.

Those workers do all of the work, looking after new eggs that the female lays, feeding her, tending to everything.

The colony gets a bit too big, so the queen starts laying eggs with new Queens and males.

The new Queens (in some species, like this one, much larger than the males) and the males emerge with wings, and take flight to disperse and found new colonies.

There follows a mad dash to mate, the males will only live for a week at most, while the new Queens will mate with many of them, storing the sperm for them, which she'll be able to use to lay eggs for the rest of her life (which in some species can be as long as 15 years in the wild!).

The Queen then chews off her own wings (!) and creates a burrow in which to lay her first eggs, and so begins a new colony (she won't feed until her first female workers hatch and go foraging for her).

All of which is a longwinded way of saying I'm not going to talk about the football... Save that, unfortunately, the better team (in the game and through the whole tournament) won.