Red imported fire ants, Solenopsis invicta Buren, are medical, urban, and agricultural pests from South America. They are successful invaders due to their preference for disturbed habitats, their high reproductive rates, and their ability to feed on a wide variety of organisms. It is thought that adult ants are only able to ingest liquids or very small particles. Fourth-instar larvae are used by the colony to digest solid food and then regurgitate it for consumption by workers and queens. Larvae are an ideal source to investigate symbiotic bacteria that could be involved in nutrient distributions. The composition of the bacterial community in the fire ant larvae was described with culture-independent methods utilizing 16S rDNA sequencing. The 16S rRNA gene was directly amplified from mixed-population DNA of fire ant larval guts only and whole larvae by PCR and cloned into Escherichia coli. Sequenced bacteria clones from guts were predominantly from the phylum Proteobacteria and the family Enterobacteriacae. Of the 88 sequenced clones, 68% matched uncultured bacteria from environmental deposits, vertebrate and invertebrate guts. In contrast to bacteria found in the guts, 85% of the 88 clones sequenced from the whole larvae were of the phylum Firmicutes. The study suggests that the number of bacterial strains in larval guts may be far fewer than those present outside the guts since whole-larva samples did not yield many Proteobacteria. When using PCR amplifications, templates present in higher abundance may obscure those of lower abundance.