Parasitic Queen

[BrunoB]

Hey, here I am again xs
Well, I recently cougth a queen, witch has been identified as a parasitic lasius.
This one:





I've been researching about parasitic ants and how to raise a queen, but all the methods I found require you to either have a big and established colony from where you could steal some larva, eggs and young workers, or a young colony that could be subdued by the queen (by killing the native queen).
I currently own 3 lasius colonies with around 15 workers, 1 lasius queen still expecting her first worker and a tetramorium Immigrans on the same situation.
I have no older colony's beacuse it's my first year ant keeping and I didn't really want to sacrifice one of my lasius queens

Do you now of any other method for raising a colony from my parasitic queen that would work in my situation ?
I don't want her to die while I prepare things, and I have no idea if she will stay alive for long, or if I need to feed her or what to feed her.

If anyone has any ideas that could help please share them with me
Thank you for your time.

[ClashOwenBash]

Congrats on your queen (I believe it could be Lasius Umbratus)
You could always try collecting some brood and workers from wild colonies. I know this can be risky but it might be your only option. This can work as some of my friends have done it successfully. Hope this helps also Lasius Umbratus prefers Lasius Niger colonies the most.

[MorbidBugg]

On the plus side to having to collect wild colonies lasius usually hide under rocks around gardens not only that but they tend to keep pupa and larva directly under the rock so once you move the rock toy have a few minutes to collect pupa. I'd also catch a few workers to boost it. What I did with my lasius murphyi was I went to a local garden flipped a few rocks and found a lasius colony I took a small container and scooped the pupa and larva with some dirt. I then located ants that were hanging around the eggs these are nursery ants and are likely to be younger than the others in the colony grab 4 to six of them in another container (or the same one thays what I did) when I got home I grabbed a tuper ware container placed a new pupa in the Queens tube then placed the tube with the queen in the tuper ware still closed. Next I emptied the host colony into the tuper ware amd inserted a new dark tube. Once the workers had grabbed half the brood and syarted to put them in the new tube I've opened the queen now thays she familiarized her self with the egg she ran around kick darting in and feeling the workers because the workers were busy finding the eggs they didn't spend much time examining the queen. By the time all the pupa were gathered the queen had made her way into the new nest and there was NO DEATGS. This may have been a fluke but it worked and figured I'd pass on my strategy.

[BrunoB]

*** SPAM *** and MorbidBugg thank you for the tips, I will probably try something like what MorbidBugg described

[MorbidBugg]

Oh yea and it never hurts to give a bit of sugar water especially to parasite queens as they are usually semi claustral.

And I won't lie I took Batspiderfish paper looked at the most successful ways and adapted a theory of confusion. If you want to do it the actual step by step way this may help
http://www.formiculture.com/topic/3252-much-ado-about-the-founding-of-lasius-temporary-social-parasites/

[JoeHostile1]

Definitely feed her throuought the whole process. She may not lay eggs until next June. Surgar water and proteins from insects. Also the queen technically doesn’t need brood until after hibernation If she’s like the social parasite Lasius claviger, also from my experience she doesn’t need a lot. So your Lasius colonies still have time to produce brood for your parasite queen.

If you can’t find a wild colony to steal brood from you can give her 1 worker from one of your existing colonies and then just steal larvae/pupae one at a time from your existing queens as they become available.