Can anyone identify this species of ant?

I change the water in my birdbaths and bowls several times a day since it is so very hot outside. After lunch during the regular "refill time”, I looked out on the back patio to see the bowl right next to the door filled with these squiggling and drowning winged ants. At first glance I wasn't sure if it was some form of wasp or ant, but I decided upon ant after closely looking at its head and especially upon finding a much smaller version of this winged creature alongside its larger relatives also squirming in the bowl. That one has no wings and is easily identified as an ant, but I still don’t know what species. I’ve never seen one like it before. I’ve seen “cow killer ants” with hair on their abdomen, but their bodies were completely covered with hairs. This one only has concentric circles of short black hair with the orange abdomen *very* slightly visible through each circle if you look very closely through a magnifying lens. I couldn't get a clear photo of that or the smaller ant ( it came out blurry), but it looks almost identical to the winged creatures except for being much, much smaller. The most distinctive feature is the black hair rings circling like a bulls eye around the lower 2/3 of the abdomen to the anus.
What is this? I've been searching for an hour in online identification guides and in my own books on insect identification and so far, it eludes me.
Any help would be appreciated. If this many winged ants dropped into this water bowl this morning, I must have a colony very near, looking to expand. I wonder how many didn’t drop into the bowl?
I have a couple of other photos that look similar. I put all the winged ants in a jar with tiny air holes..until I discover just what I'm dealing with here, before I either exterminate or release them. Three of the winged ants didn’t survive, but 7 still remain, along with one of their tinier ant relatives
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UPDATE JULY 26, 2011

While I received many emails giving guesses as to the species, I actually discovered the answer today on my own. I discovered is that it is technically a WASP,
even though the very tiny female has no wings.
I discovered this is a type of "velvet ant", a type of ant some call
"cow killer ants" or "cow ants" because they can inflict painful stings. I'd never
seen one like this one before, but I have seen several other very
colorful species on my property. As the orginal entry indicated, I had already thought of them, based on the behavior of these creatures, but they just looked so very different from the other velvet ants I'd seen here I ruled that out initially.

http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/misc/wasps/mutillidae.htm

You'll find one that looks SIMILAR to what I have pictured scrolling
down at "Subfamily: Sphaeropthalminae

Tribe: Sphaeropthalmini
Genus: Sphaeropthalma
subgenus Sphaeropthalma Blake
pensylvanica floridensis Schuster
pensylvanica pensylvanica (Lepeletier)"

The pensylvanica pensylvanica (Lepeletier)is the one it looks like. But this close up photo here also fails to show that there is red visible in between each circle of black spiky hairs on the abdomen http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/misc/wasps/Mutillidae_38.htm
I'd thought it reminded me of the velvet ants I'd seen in behavior but
the fact that the head and thorax didn't have many hairs threw me
off...and the fact I'd never seen more than one velvet ant at a time
before.