There were 10-11 workers recently, but now 3 or 4 of them are dead. When I put in another drop of honey, one of the workers got stuck in it and died. They have been in a tiny test tube that the queen was put in when I caught her, and that test tube ran out of water. But the size and length of the test tube makes it impossible to shine the light on them to get them to move, because the light will also shine into the new test tube. They have been connected to a fresh test tube for a couple weeks and haven't moved, so I decided I would just dump the queen, workers, and brood into the new test tube since I have seen people do that before with no problems. I tried to do this, but
Crematogaster sp. are very good at climbing so the queen, one worker, and some brood stayed in the old tube, no matter how hard I was shaking it an tapping it. 2 or 3 of the workers were desperately trying to climb out of the test tubes, so a couple of them escaped and I caught them again. Those 2 continued to climb out, so while I was tapping and shaking the tube, they were squished. I'm pretty frustrated, even though the whole situation is my fault.
Now I have taped the test tubes together again and I hope they move into the new test tube now that I dumped most of the brood in there. Also, one of my
Pheidole obscurithorax workers got stuck in the honey and died, so that queen is down to two workers. Everything was going right, with a lot of my queens getting nantics in the past few days, but now I'm just frustrated. I will literally scream if this
Crematogaster colony still refuses to move into the new tube, even when it has water and the old one doesn't.
Here are some lovely pictures I took a few days ago, before any of them died. One of the lighter colored workers in the first picture is the one that got stuck in the honey. Rest in peace little babies <3
