Update on injured queens and transferring brood

[renaazra]

This was my old post https://forum.AntsCanada.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=13242

Sadly both queens passed away. But out of I I have a weird development. So both queens had workers (4 & 1). My surrogate queen again only has one with about 5 on the way. Now in a previous time I accidentally put a non colony worker in the colony and the accepted it. So I dared it and put dead queens 4 and 1 together with both batches of brood. They all were in "attack mode" at first but now all are getting along like they're part of the same colony. Now I did end up transferring the brood to surrogate queen and she's caring for all of it beautifully. But I hate to see five workers die expecially with how much the surrogate queen now has on her mandibles. I have never heard of workers accepting other workers. So is it possible for a queen to accept other workers?

[AntsLuxembourg]

Alright. First of all there are a couple of different ants species that create massive super colonies like the golden empire. They have/had about 12 queens I guess. So yes it is possible to merge colonies but not all ant species does that. That is because they got a diffrent pheromone code or whatever so they can't communicate properly. Just to explain this matter basicly. There actually is more to this. Usually it works to transfer the brood and eggs since they get marked by the queen and workers with their pheromones so they know "what language to speak". So it depends on what species you have. I don't know the exact work of it's polygen or something like that.

Anyway what exact species do you have? I tried the same with some workers of a messor barbarus colony but the queen of that colony also passed away shortly after. Not sure if it was the stress the might have been under or some of the workers attacking although it looked like they worked along quite well. So hard to tell what it was. Anyway. Do some research about your colony and if they can have more than one queen.

I mean I would tell you but since I don't kn ow the exact species I can do very very little for you :C