Yes, definitely Formica pratensis. A nice find, and confirmation that these isolated inland nests are still surviving, and apparently thriving, in the lanes where they seem to have cropped up here and there over the years in Guernsey, and were on the maps that Charles David used to produce. Good to see a brand new one!

Isolated single nests are the usual norm for F. pratensis. The apparently mutually friendly ‘supercolonial’, probably polygynous, nests of the Guernsey cliffs are not its traditional habit elsewhere, although similar populations are recorded in some sites, e.g. one or two places in the Netherlands, as Cedric Collingwoood used to tell me about.

Single, isolated nests like this one will have been started by a mated female having flown from its mother nest, and ‘taken over’ a nest of either F. fusca or F. cunicularia, by entering it and usurping the existing queen. On the cliffs, I think new nests are mostly started by mated queens going off with a few workers from their mother nest (“splitting” or “fission”), or simply attracting passing workers to them – “worker capture”, as it’s sometimes known. Wood ant queens cannot start colonies unaided. The two modes of colony reproduction are therefore in evidence on Guernsey.

The isolated nests will therefore usually only live as long as the founding queen (monogyny). There must be many dotted about undiscovered in open hedges and on lane banks.

The weather this year on the whole must have been good for the F. pratensis, although the recent very wet and relatively cool spell will have been unwelcome.