I am new to this hobby, I caught 6 queens almost 4 weeks ago. I was thinking about maybe someday keeping ants, but on that day I had to react quickly for those queens not to be trampled in the tight space I found them in. Someday became today. So I was quite unprepared, to say the least.
I put the queens into whatever test-tube-like containers I could find, put them in a cardboard box, and tried to not check up on them too often.
After two days one of the queens had drowned, as I may not have put enough cotton in her tube to keep the water sealed.
A second queen could fortunately be saved, her test tube had also begun to flood. I proceeded to lift the openings of the test tubes up with a cotton swab, so future water spillages would be contained. After this initial disaster, the remaining 5 queens began to lay eggs, and I tried not to disturb them too often.
However, over the last two weeks, they became gradually less active. Yesterday, I realized one of them had died. It was also the only queen still only having small eggs, all the others had eggs of different sizes by now. Still nothing has hatched.
I was unable to shoot a decent picture even of a not-moving one, but I am quite confident they are Tetramorium caespitum.
My questions are:
Is it normal that the queens have periods of reduced activity?
Is my tube setup right, or should I have used more/less cotton, more water, ...?
Is it normal that all the queens put their brood right on the cotton next to the water? Or is this a sign that the setup ist not optimal?
How many queens typically succeed to form a colony from a sample size of 5?
Thank you, I appreciate any feedback I can get.
Lowski