For both single organisms and social insect colonies, metabolic rate per mass decreases as the total mass increases, suggesting that cooperation can reduce energy use. However, it is unknown whether this benefit pertains to segments of insect colonies. In this study, we perform experiments to measure the scaling of metabolic rates in 20 – 800 fire ant workers. We measure the carbon dioxide production rate of varying masses of ants in containers of fixed size as a function of temperature and dry or wet conditions. Surprisingly, we found that in all cases, the metabolic rate scales simply with the number of ants, and that fire ant workers do not expend less energy per capita while in larger groups.