Carpenter ants Pileated hole

I needed to make a reconnaissance hike through the Babcock Ridge and Henne preserves—my goal was to shot videos that I could then learn to string together into some kind of coherent narrative—and while I was walking, I thought I'd stop by a tree that I'd photographed on numerous occasions to gauge the progress of some Pileated woodpeckers that had excavated an area filled with Carpenter ants. The hole was still there, but it didn't appear to have been enlarged in quite some time. Before I formed the thought that the woodpeckers had eaten all the goodies, however, I noticed a swarm of large ants, some of them bearing wings, boiling out of the hole. None of the insects paid the slightest attention to social-distancing mandates. Clearly, the birds had not completely eliminated their prey, and the ants that the woodpeckers couldn't reach had prospered enough in the past couple of years to be ready to send a vanguard of formicine troops out into the world on a mating flight that, if the insects got lucky, would lead to the establishment of a new colony... and more food for Pileateds.