chewing cotton

[Lucasabbott]

my new caught queen ant is not calm at all and wont stop trying to chew through the cotton in my test tube setup and trying to squeeze her head through it to escape. Does anyone have suggestions on what I should do?

[liufen001]

Same thing happend to my queen, i let her sit for quite a while (at least a week) and then she started laying eggs, maybey she's just stressed.

[Lucasabbott]

Ok thank you

[liufen001]

Glad i can help, maybe someone else has a better solution...?

[Lucasabbott]

maybe?

[Iabast]

I would make sure that there is enough cotton in there, just to be safe, other than that, I’ve got nothing .

[SkeleAnt]

It’s a stress thing most likely. So long as the cotton isn’t too densely packed so she can’t breathe, the best thing to do is leave her test tube in the dark and forget about her for at least a week, maybe longer. She doesn’t need constant checking at her founding stage, and looking at her frequently will only increase her stress.

Ants also sometimes pull cotton in their test tubes to sort of arrange their space like they would if they were making a normal nest, so she might just be trying to fill in some of the empty space with whatever medium she has available to make herself more comfortable. In this case all she has is the cotton. I would really just leave her be for a while and not disturb her, and see if she starts laying eggs and calms down after that point.

[Lucasabbott]

thank you for all the help!