Help! New to this!

[Strawhatsheik]

Hello all!
So glad to be a member of this forum. I have always wanted an ant colony and used the information from here to try and start one. I caught two queen carpenter ants, camponotus, I believe, and had them in a test tube setup. Everything was going well, I checked on them occasionally and they were laying eggs and seemed fine.

After about a week, one of them started acting strangely. She kept falling over on her back and kicking her legs, she lost her ability to stand up and died within a week.

The other lived for a month, kept laying eggs and seemed fine. One day I checked on her and she had eaten all of her eggs and was doing the same thing! Kicking over on her back and unable to stand! I couldn't figure it out. I wondered if she wasn't claustral, although research shows she should be. In case it was food related, I tried offering her honey and sweet fruit, but she won't eat and is now very weak and about to die as well.

I'm very discouraged, besides feeling bad for these little girls, I have now missed the breeding season and my chances of finding another carpenter queen are slim to none.

Has anyone had any problems like this before, any idea what may be killing them? I don't want to kill anymore. I left them alone, in a dark place, in a warm room, in a test tube setup and they just died! Any ideas?

[larynx]

a few questions to try ant figure out what went wrong.....
what temp was the room were they were kept at?
does your house get sprayed for bugs?
how was the tube set up?
do you have a photo so we can see what kind of ant it was?
did she have wings or no?
how did you catch them?

[Strawhatsheik]

a few questions to try ant figure out what went wrong.....
what temp was the room were they were kept at?
does your house get sprayed for bugs?
how was the tube set up?
do you have a photo so we can see what kind of ant it was?
did she have wings or no?
how did you catch them?

Thanks for the reply!
The room was 78 degrees or so, give or take.
My house has been sprayed but the spraying occurred in between the two deaths. I know it couldn't have influenced the first one, and I keep them on a high shelf in a shut closet. The sprayer knows my love of bugs and wouldn't have gone near them.
I will try to take a photo when I get home, although based on my ant book I know it is some species of camponotus.
Neither of them had wings, but there were marks on the thorax from where the wings had been.
I caught both of them in late April, they actually just walked into the house! One in my house, one in my sisters house. Neither of our houses had been sprayed before their capture.

Thank you for any help you can offer, this is quite baffling and discouraging.
The only thing I can think of is could my tap water, or the cotton balls be bad in some way? Should I only use filtered/distilled water? And if so, why did one live for two months no problem? Now the second one, who lasted longer, she did have a mold outbreak in the tube. I connected her to a clean one and over two days she moved the eggs. Some of the eggs didn't make it, but she was fine for two to three weeks after, until this happened. Do you think that might have something to do with it?

[larynx]

all good info, and it sound like you did almost everything right.
how exactly are the tubes set up? (a pic would help.)
where was the cotton before you used it? (cotton absorbs literally everything)
is your water city water or well?
the mold shouldn't have been an issue. but a tip for cutting down chances of mold.... make sure EVERYTHING you touch during setting her up is clean and sanitary, fingers and all.