The AntsCanada Ant Forum's

If nothing is working for you; you can feed her fruit. But protein is better for egg laying. Also is she semi-claustral or fully claustral.

I have her full sealed up because I don’t have any kind of out world set up but that may be worth a try. I gave her a drop of honey today to see it she is interested. I was also thinking if I leave her for a few days to eat maybe I could put her in the refrigerator for a week or two.

Make sure there is a warm spot on the test tube (heat cable or something). Definitely feed her!!! Honey was good, but give her a cricket leg or something as well.
4 main things for laying: warmth, full, dark, humidity.
If she was infirtle she would have died or laid male eggs by now. Sounds like she is fertile just is not comfortable in her environment. Are you heating her? How hot is the ambient temp in her area? And give her some protien!

I’m going to have to come up with a way to keep her warmer. I think the humidity is ok I see her go back and forth between the wet and the dry cotton. Our average temp isn’t to extreme one way or the other but I can see her needing the extra heat. And I’m going to keep an eye out for something to feed her. Not likely that I find a cricket but maybe a beetle or a firefly.

I found another queen in June around the same time I started asking about this queen who is already a year old. I think they are both ordinary backyard garden ants.

This years queen has already reproduced in 6 weeks or less. She has 8-9 workers and a new pile of eggs. Last years queen is still alive with no eggs. I keep them in the same closet in the same conditions.

I just ordered my first formicarium today.

I would give up. I have 30+ tetramorium queens in set ups, 6 lasius flavus and 1 lasius niger... although checking too often... even once a day will cause some queens to consume their young one thing i do know is if she is fertile she will lay eggs... mine appear to have become immune to my checking with over half containing nanatic pupae... although the varying stages tells me they have started over a few times... point being if you leave her in a dark space overnight especially repeatedly over a year she should have laid something.

I am still just so surprised at the resilience of such an animal that could live for so long in a test tube.