Formica colony accepting a new queen, and possibly creating a new one?

General Off Topic Chat and Discussions

Moderator: ooper01

Post Reply
AntsDakota
Posts: 1283
Joined: Sat Mar 17, 2018 4:22 pm
Location: South Dakota

Formica colony accepting a new queen, and possibly creating a new one?

Post: # 35266Post AntsDakota
Sat Apr 21, 2018 6:23 pm

Formica argentea is very common where I live. And when I was younger, I didn't want to wait for nuptial flights to happen, and broke into wild colonies and captured their queens. So I captured 2 queens from the same nest, and kept them with about 50 or so workers. I came back again to collect more workers and found another queen! (She did not have wings, so she was not an elate, and she did not grow wings. And I tore up almost every chamber and tunnel in the nest, and all the queens were in the same chamber, so I am positive that the queen was not in the nest when I broke in.) I kept coming back, and the same thing happened until the worker supply and brood supply was extremely low. In all I had 6 queens. I think that the workers raised some larvae into queen ants. Then they created males for her to mate with. Perhaps the workers started laying male eggs, or the infertile queen laid male eggs, and mated with the males from another infertile queen? So then I found another queen, and put her in a test tube. I grabbed some workers from my colony and put them into the test tube, with the queen. Then she started brushing her legs against the side of her abdomen. And the worker examined her with their antennae, and finally accepted her. Does this behavior sound familiar, as AntsCanada would say, "ac family"? If you have not seen the old Dark Knights video, watch it at the AntsCanada youtube channel. It is titled "Flying Fire Ants vs. Cloning Crazy Ants." It clearly demonstrates a black crazy ant queen being accepted into the Dark Knights, by way of pleasing pheromones. Formica might be doing this too!
"God made every kind of wild beasts and every kind of livestock and every kind of creeping things;" (including ants) "and God saw that it was good." Genesis 1:25

AntsDakota
Posts: 1283
Joined: Sat Mar 17, 2018 4:22 pm
Location: South Dakota

Re: Formica colony accepting a new queen, and possibly creating a new one?

Post: # 35267Post AntsDakota
Sat Apr 21, 2018 6:29 pm

And the colony even revived itself when I left it alone.
"God made every kind of wild beasts and every kind of livestock and every kind of creeping things;" (including ants) "and God saw that it was good." Genesis 1:25

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 13 guests