Multi Solenopsis Queens?
Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2017 6:14 pm
Yep multi queens in the same colony! A well established colony at that!
While out at the paintball field (Good friends with the owner) he was out spreading poison on the fields to get rid of the fire ants that were all over the playing fields (yes a sad time), we have to keep them off the fields because players kneel down, crawl, and walk every inch of the field while playing paintball the last thing we need is for them to get stung by the ants. We did have one case where a player slid into a bunker and right into a fire ant mound, he was highly allergic to them (wasps and bees too) and thank god he had his epipen with him!!
Well I was kinda curious on how developed the colonies were and scraped back the top 3-4 inches to check them out and was rather surprised to what I found! Every mound I uncovered had a minimum of 3-6 queens (not algates) near the surface and a lot of eggs and pupa (near the surface for the sun's warmth), that caught me by surprise. I have seen that multi queens have been together when establishing a new colony but for there to be so many in a well established colony? Interesting! I went and got my phone and did a video of me uncovering one. Please excuse the video quality and also the shaking of the video.
While out at the paintball field (Good friends with the owner) he was out spreading poison on the fields to get rid of the fire ants that were all over the playing fields (yes a sad time), we have to keep them off the fields because players kneel down, crawl, and walk every inch of the field while playing paintball the last thing we need is for them to get stung by the ants. We did have one case where a player slid into a bunker and right into a fire ant mound, he was highly allergic to them (wasps and bees too) and thank god he had his epipen with him!!
Well I was kinda curious on how developed the colonies were and scraped back the top 3-4 inches to check them out and was rather surprised to what I found! Every mound I uncovered had a minimum of 3-6 queens (not algates) near the surface and a lot of eggs and pupa (near the surface for the sun's warmth), that caught me by surprise. I have seen that multi queens have been together when establishing a new colony but for there to be so many in a well established colony? Interesting! I went and got my phone and did a video of me uncovering one. Please excuse the video quality and also the shaking of the video.