The AntsCanada Ant Forum's

small update. today when i got home from work the queen had a dead worker laying under her. its head cut off. the rest of the workers are still relaxing near the queen. i wonder if its the same worker that kept messing with her last night and she just got tired of it?

I think that whichever workers are too old or aggressive to accept the parasitic queen will eventually get in a fight with the her, one that they will usually lose without a sufficient numbers advantage.

well during there first hour only 1 worker kept pestering her. maybe thats the case

another update: the ants are on a cold basement floor for hibernation.(and have been for 2 days) another worker is dead near the queen. however an alive and well worker is behind her, and the workers will go somewhat near her but not to close, almost as if they are afraid of her

HUGE UPDATE!! so last night i found a Lasius colony that had a ton of brood, so i grabbed some of it and decided 1 last thing to unite the queen with the workers. long story short the workers moved some of the pupae to the tube with the queen. but still they didnt seem to be united. until now!! its very hard to take a photo of it since they are so tiny but!! in the pics between the pupae and the queen, she has a pile of eggs!!! this is so amazing!! http://imgur.com/a/hQFsy

Ok, so, if you wanted this to be an experiment, adding brood or workers from another ant you think is Lasius pretty much negates anything that could have been learned. Experiments need to have limited variables, so that we would know whether the supposed Prenolepis were taking care of the queen, or just the Lasius workers.

If you wanted to keep the queen as a pet, then why try to use a kind of worker that would most likely kill her?

Those larvae look larger than the workers, which makes me think this brood belongs to a different species. Lasius alienus will keep reproductive brood over the winter, but these would only be at an early-instar larval stage. Were the Lasius yellow? because Lasius interjectus might have larvae of that size.

In any event, I would just let your colony fatten up to hibernate and stop messing with them.

Here let me clear a couple things up. My original thought about the species was wrong. The queen and workers and brood are all lasius umbratus. And besides 4 escapes the only dead workers are the 2 that the queen killed. One on day one and one on day 2. Today she sisnt kill any and I've noticed the workers seem alot more calm and happy to be around her. Also I haven t hibernated then due to the amout of activity they are showing. That along with the queen just laying eggs last night makes me think they are not ready to hibernate yer

ok, HUGE UPDATE on my parasite colony. First off, its not lasius, they are all in fact Tapinoma sessile! I just looked and compared my Tapinoma sessile ants I caught 2 days ago with my parasite colony... they are the same.. This entire time i thought i had honey pots and lasius and such.. when I've actually had Tapinoma sessile!! thats why the ants always smelled!! Thats why the queens I find (mostly) are nice to eachother.. Im sitting on a huge goldmine of Tapinoma sessile. So I then had a thought. The ants I caught 2 days ago and asked for an id are sitting in a test tube ready to be chilled, I also had a spare queen sitting around. (I thought she was a parasite queen) so I decided to try an experiment. i chilled the workers and once they woke up I then attached the queens tube with the workers.. and OMG!! she immediately walked right up to the workers tube and... Walked right in! Then...... nothing.. the workers didnt mind what so ever. They left her walk on by and walk on them. I was flabbergasted by this. This is a totally strange queen that they have never seen. She then settled in right on the cotton and I kept watching for 5 more minutes and guess what? Nothing happened. The ants didnt care what so ever. So I then hibernated that colony. So now im left with something amazing. I have 2 separate Tapinoma sessile colonies. BUT they are poly!! so i could easily combine the large worker colony with the small worker colony (minus the 13 workers just to be safe) and make a SUPER colony. If i manage to combine them then the total colony size would be: 2 queens,150-200 workers, ~100 eggs, and ~100 pupae! i am beyond happy right now figuring all this out. For now both colonies will stay separate and hibernate until I take them out.

The ants in your video are all Lasius. The queen is Lasius umbratus, and the workers are L. alienus, L. neoniger, or L. pallitarsis.

You might want to do an ID request for the new ants. Are the pupae in cocoons?