I think I caught a mature queen. Tips on collecting workers?
Posted: Fri Dec 16, 2016 12:07 am
So I was on sentry post today, and there's a colony that lives in the wall of the outpost, and I like to watch them sometimes. Near the start of my post, I saw a much larger ant than the others walking very slowly. They seemed to be walking past and ignoring her, and I was curious. I bent over to examine her, and realized she was a queen! I dumped out my water bottle and used a coin to pick her up and place her gently in the bottle, then closed the cap. I hid her in the shade and out of the wind and covered her with my extra jacket.
Ten minutes later, I noticed the ants on the sidewalk moving in strange figure 8 patterns, concentrating on the area I'd just picked up the queen from, but not really doing anything. After 20 minutes of searching, they all went back to the main entrance to their nest, and soon after there were dozens of them rushing out, performing the same figure 8 patterns, and advancing outward. They spread out until they covered the whole 1 meter square of concrete, then came back. A few minutes later, well over a hundred ants, possibly two hundred, poured out of the main entrance one after another, moving at a speed I've never seen them move, frantically zipping about in wide figure 8 loops, spanning a width of about 6-10 inch sweeps for each ant, and overlapping a lot. They moved all the way to the end of the concrete, and onto the curb that surrounds the grass. They kept going until I could no longer make them out against the concrete of the curb, and they were still spread as a blanket across the entire concrete area just outside the outpost.
I have never seen them do this, and that they kept it up until the end of my post and were still doing it when I left leads me to believe I may have stolen their queen. I recognize the queen I caught as Pheidole sp. and her wing scars have healed, so perhaps these are a Pheidole sp. colony? They are brown and reddish in color, and are all about 2-3mm long, and often bring back small dead insects—mostly earwigs—and they live inside the wall of a small guard shack, in Okinawa Japan.
Does anyone have any other ideas for why this happened? Is it something ants would normally do, and just coincidence that it happened after I picked up a queen? If this was their queen, does anyone have any tips on collecting some of the workers, and reuniting them with their queen? I would love if that were an option. I could start a fresh colony with a jump-start.
Ten minutes later, I noticed the ants on the sidewalk moving in strange figure 8 patterns, concentrating on the area I'd just picked up the queen from, but not really doing anything. After 20 minutes of searching, they all went back to the main entrance to their nest, and soon after there were dozens of them rushing out, performing the same figure 8 patterns, and advancing outward. They spread out until they covered the whole 1 meter square of concrete, then came back. A few minutes later, well over a hundred ants, possibly two hundred, poured out of the main entrance one after another, moving at a speed I've never seen them move, frantically zipping about in wide figure 8 loops, spanning a width of about 6-10 inch sweeps for each ant, and overlapping a lot. They moved all the way to the end of the concrete, and onto the curb that surrounds the grass. They kept going until I could no longer make them out against the concrete of the curb, and they were still spread as a blanket across the entire concrete area just outside the outpost.
I have never seen them do this, and that they kept it up until the end of my post and were still doing it when I left leads me to believe I may have stolen their queen. I recognize the queen I caught as Pheidole sp. and her wing scars have healed, so perhaps these are a Pheidole sp. colony? They are brown and reddish in color, and are all about 2-3mm long, and often bring back small dead insects—mostly earwigs—and they live inside the wall of a small guard shack, in Okinawa Japan.
Does anyone have any other ideas for why this happened? Is it something ants would normally do, and just coincidence that it happened after I picked up a queen? If this was their queen, does anyone have any tips on collecting some of the workers, and reuniting them with their queen? I would love if that were an option. I could start a fresh colony with a jump-start.