Pheidole sp. disaster

[Alexander]

Two weeks ago i caught one pheidole palidula queen, and 5 days later i caught another 5 of the same species,
Pheidole Palidula is poligenus so i joined the 6 queens toguether in a test tube (the first queen i caught already had eggs when i intruduced the other 5).
All the queens behaved fine and joined forces and 4 days lather they were all fine! There was some larvae and loads of eggs.

When i checked how they were doing two days lather i couldnt belive what i saw, two queens where brutaly murdered and decapitated and another one mas barely alive whithought one of her legs, the other 3 surviving queens where completly calm whith an even bigger batch of eggs...

I have no idea what hapen but i saw some of the larvae feeding on the dead queens so i think they might have killed them because they can feed their larvae more and lay a greater amount of eggs to start their colonys?
Im completly clueless and terrified of this happening again so can someone pls try to explain!

[PTasker15]

Pheidole Pallidula Is Monogyne.Also The "Slaughtered"Ones Died Of Sickness And Were Decapitated And Put At The Edge Of The Tube.The One That's Dying..Well I Have No Answers..

[Alexander]

Well thats something i wasn't expecting to hear, pheidole palidula is poligenus and colonys in the wild have up to 35 queens.
What you have just said makes no sence what so ever because if the queens died of sickness why bother decapitating them... And how can you explain they teryng a leg apart from one of the queens!
Seriously im not trying to be mean but make sure what you are saying is right before posting it

[Alexander]

Here is some evidence that pheidole Palidula is poligenus, apart from several videos on youtube whith multiple queened colonies here is the chart from the biggest ant selling website: https://www.antstore.net/shop/en/ants/Ants-from-South-Europe/Pheidole-pallidula.html

[AntsLuxembourg]

Hey,

About the decapitating I thing that's just to avoid those queens to move any further so they stay away from the brute or couldn't go wild. I don't know if they live where you can find that fungus controlling ants to leave them to die so if they are from one of those regions then it makes sence cause this way ant's can't be controlled properly by the fungus.

That they have ripped of one of the queens legs might be because that queen too the task of killing the sick ones and one of the sick queens managed to bite of a leg during the process.

About the multiple queened colonies I can't say much about any verification but it could be that some queens don't join forces immediatly. Like AntsCanada added some queens to his golden empire and while some workers embrassed the first one with open arms and checked on her carefully they were quite harsh with the other one for some reason but both were accepted. It might just be that the queens are much more protectiv of their ants during their funding period.

I would sugguest, you try to give the ants some food and remove the dead queens so the testtube is clean. This way you also avoid that the sickness might spread if they were sick.

Also they might have killed those two queens due to a lack of food which could also explain the decapitation. So just feed the queens a bit.

Well there you go. Have some possible reasons why or why not the acted like they did. I must say however that I'm not an expert about ants. I just know a lot of stuff and also compare general behaviours from other animals. For example the protectiv thing. Loads of female animals are very aggressiv against anyone and anything they count as a threat for their children.

[Alexander]

thats prety intersting,
i dont have a ant kiling fungus were i live, however i still think that the queens were not sick!
As to the queens beeing hungry i gave them a drop of sugarwater the day i joined them

Based on your information i think i have another teory:
When i intruduced the queens i gave them quite a bit of space in the test tube, so they might have created two diferente groups and when they started laing more eggs and space was limited they fighted whith each other causing all of this...

what do you think?

I dont consider myself a pro antkeeper, but i have quite a bit of experience and this was quite shoking to me! So if you have any more theorys pls share

[AntsLuxembourg]

Well that's also an idea on what could have caused this. Like fighting for space. I might have sugguested that myself if I knew how big your setup was.

Or those two queens were like BFFs and got quite nasty with the other 4 queens list talking behind their backs about the lengh of their legs or antenna.

No it might be that they also just didn't like those two queens or that they perhaps just seemed fishy to the other ones. Well luckily you still got 3 queens left to keep a closer look.

[Steven]

((((((((((((Well thats something i wasn't expecting to hear, pheidole palidula is poligenus and colonys in the wild have up to 35 queens.
What you have just said makes no sence what so ever because if the queens died of sickness why bother decapitating them... And how can you explain they teryng a leg apart from one of the queens!
Seriously im not trying to be mean but make sure what you are saying is right before posting it,,,,,,,,,,,)))))))


Maybe one queen counted the larvae and new she didn’t have enough fat reserves for her baby’s so she killed them or started the killing and the other help purely on inpulse pheromones