Division of labor resulting from self-organization is considered to be an important aspect of sociality, with consequences for individual and group fitness.  Queens from different populations of the seed-harvester ant Pogonomyrmex californicus use two alternate nest-founding strategies that affect both the division of labor and individual fitness.  In previous work we found that division of labor differs between group-founding queens (GF) and forced associations of normally solitary-founding queens (SF), and that GF queens actually show lower levels of division of labor.  Partitioning of tasks between queens during division of labor can generate cost disparities that reduce fitness for the queen performing specific tasks.  From this, we hypothesize that the evolution of GF must include some mechanism to curtail cost disparities.  However, we still do not understand the direct relationships between nest-founding strategy, division of labor, and fitness.  We predict that decreased performance of high-cost tasks by GF queens would lead to higher fitness relative to SF queens when queens are paired. We compared the nest founding behavior and brood production for pairs of queens in three treatments: both queens GF, both queens SF, and one GF queen paired with one SF queen.  We monitored performance of three tasks, foraging, excavation, and brood care, during colony founding to determine the division of labor within each nest.  We also monitored three fitness correlates: queen survival, changes in the number of eggs produced in each nest, and changes in queen mass.  Overall, GF-GF pairs had the highest survival rate and laid the fewest eggs per queen, while GF-SF pairs had intermediate survival rates and egg production.  SF-SF pairs had the lowest survival rates and the highest rates of egg production per queen.  All three groups showed no change in mass, which may be due to frequent foraging during colony founding.