Recovering Lasius Cannibal Queen

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linbrich
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Aug 01, 2021 11:00 pm
Location: Utah, USA

Recovering Lasius Cannibal Queen

Post: # 80592Post linbrich
Sun Aug 01, 2021 11:19 pm

Greetings, All:

I've been searching for information on my situation and am coming up blank. I was hoping to draw on some of the AC community expertise.

(Writing from Utah, USA for context)

I captured a Lasius Niger queen this Spring and cloistered her in a test tube setup. After some weeks and developing eggs/pupae, the first nanitic arrived, followed by a few more. I think I waited too long (about a week or 10 days) to feed the bunch, because when I peeked in to check up on the growing colony, I found the queen with a lone surviving young ant surrounded by ant parts and no eggs/larvae.

I fed the survivors and cleaned/transitioned out of the mess. Sad lesson learned... BUT

I now have a known fertile queen and one nanitic. The queen is not laying anymore, they are just subsisting.
My fundamental question: Is there a way to rehabilitate this queen and restart the colony, or is it a lost cause at this point? Was kind of a rare find and I'm pretty heartbroken at the turn of events.

Hoping for any insight or related experience you may have here.

Thanks.
L R

SkeleAnt
Posts: 114
Joined: Thu Apr 11, 2019 2:51 pm
Location: Pennsylvania

Re: Recovering Lasius Cannibal Queen

Post: # 84345Post SkeleAnt
Thu Oct 21, 2021 6:18 pm

I've had experience bringing a subscericea queen back from losing her first workers. Test tube flooded in the night and she was the only one who survived. She's now a proud mother of 30+ ants.

This is a bit of a long-shot hypothesis on my end, but the queen might have stopped laying, not because she's too stressed, but because since the lack of food before (possibly) caused the death of her workers, she and her lone worker could be thinking "hey, there's not enough food to sustain larger numbers. Let's wait until we know there's a reliable source of food before laying more eggs." Ants are pretty intelligent and sensitive to environmental changes, and act accordingly. I'd say don't give up just yet. Another theory is, since you posted this in August, after losing so many workers, the energy needed to replenish the ranks before winter might not seem like it's worth it, so they're waiting until next spring to try again.

What did you feed them for their first meal? Waiting a week to 10 days before their first food isn't too long of a time, they don't need food right away, and many ants won't take food too soon after they emerge. But if the type of food wasn't agreeable, that can also cause loss of numbers. And sometimes, you'll lose ants without doing anything wrong at all. It happens.

Keeping their nest as clean as possible really benefits young colonies. If you can avoid putting their food in their test tube, that helps a lot. If you need to feed them in the test tube, maybe put the offering on a piece of foil that's easy to remove. You might be able to encourage the queen to lay eggs again by keeping her warm, but if the two are gearing up to hibernate, she won't lay any more eggs until spring.
2 founding formica subsericea
1 aphaenogaster rudis
1 brachymyrmex depilis
More still founding!

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