[1] Workers range from 3–7 mm in length and have a light tan thorax, legs and slightly darker head with black mandibles.

[3] The honey pot ants exhibit all of these characteristics within a colony: a queen and males make up the reproductive caste, and the rest of the individuals are sterile female workers.

Mating occurs during nuptial flights, where winged queens and males swarm outside the nest.

Hours before the nuptial flight, queens, males and workers emerge from the nest and swarm around the entrance hole.

[5] To mate, M. mexicanus winged queens and males emerge from an existing colony and swarm in nuptial flights.

These flights occur in late July in the evening, typically at about the same time of day when the colony workers begin foraging.

The fact that some queens and males return from these flights unmated suggests that aerial union is difficult.

[9] Ant colonies consist of a queen mother and her offspring, a majority of which are sterile female workers.

These workers gather food, tend to the brood and defend the colony, while the queens' main responsibility is to continue laying eggs.

[10] Conway surveyed sixty six M. mexicanus nest colonies located near Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs, CO.

[14] When a replete worker fills with food, her crop, or portion of her digestive tract, swells and displaces other abdominal organs.

[12] The crop of replete workers expands about four to five times its normal linear dimension when they are fully engorged with food.

Milky repletes contain large amounts of protein and oils, believed to be from insect prey.

[17] Burgett & Young (1974) found that a small percentage of repletes had two visible layers of liquid in their crops– one consisting of sugars, and the other of lipids, glycerol and cholesterol esters.

[19] In particular, M. mexicanus tends to feed on dead and moribund harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex occidentalis).

[19] Other species of ants such as Conomyrma bicolor has been known to drop stones around the entrances of M. mexicanus nests.

The foraging of a M. mexicanus colony can decrease drastically due to this stone dropping technique.

[25] The repletes of M. mexicanus and other honey ants were delicacies for the Native Americans residing in the southwest U.S. and parts of Mexico.

Mexicans would also use the "honey" from the replete ants in medicines and food, as well as ferment it for alcoholic beverages.

[1] At the Information Center of the Devil's Punch Bowl Natural Area in southern California a colony of M. mexicanus is kept in a glass jar.

According to the desk officer the colony has been kept there for about 7 years (May 2016), feeding on brown sugar and fish food flakes.