What happens to ants cut off from their colony?

Say that, after a mess of worker ants went off to forage for food, I were to put an inpenetrable barrier between them and their colony. What would they do? Would they keep battering their little anty heads against the barrier until they starved? Would they wander aimlessly in circles until death overtook them? Or would they live out their natural lives on their own?

Sua

I think they kick back, open a brew and fire off a few rude toasts to the queen, knowing they’ll never again have to cater to her selfish whims, the miserable, perpetually pregnant slave driver. So long, fat arse! Here’s to your date with a can of Raid!

Alone at last!

I think the Simpsons got the dialogue right (though in a different context):

“I’m the Queen.”
“No, I’m the Queen!”

followed by:

“Freedom! Horrible, horrible freedom!”

Small group of ants approaches: “We are the Ants. Resistance is futile. Your unique biological characteristics will be made to serve ours, mainly by ingesting them.”

Barrier falls, blocking Ant reinforcements: “Holy Crap! What the hell was that!!!?”

Ants realise they are in deep doo doo: “Ummm. Hey. Hiya doowyn? That’s all right… no need to get up. We were really going over thatta way…”

This might help.

The source describes ant behaviour when encountering a clearly penetrable barrier or, more accurately, one that can be circumvented. Extrapolating the sense of the article, if the barrier is impenetrable one concludes that half the itinerant ants would turn left at the obstacle and half would turn right.

They’d probably just go about their normal business of gathering food and digging new tunnels. If you’ve ever had an ant farm, you know that they ship you a queenless colony and they seem to do just fine.