This is an aluminum cast of a field ant colony. Ants in the genus
Formica have several common names (I call them field ants) and these ants have been identified as being in the species
Formica pallidefulva. This the first finished cast I've done of a colony made by this species and find the structure to be very distinct from the colonies of other ant types, which is always the case in my experience. Near the colony entrance there are several layers of stacked wide and flat chambers, going down to about half of the total depth. Then there are two longer tunnels extending deeper with chambers spread out along their length. The tunnels are wider than fire ant colony tunnels and other ant types I've encountered, being on average around 0.5 inches (1.2 cm) in diameter. The structure to me looks like a scaled up version of a fire ant colony section (especially the colonies with more chambers like
Cast #025). This cast is one of the larger and more complex of the non-fire ant colonies I've done.