Brood Boosting?

[MadVampy]

Brood boosting?

What are your thoughts about brood boosting?

For those that don't know what brood boosting is, it's when you take eggs (if you have only a queen), larva, pupae, from another nest (just those not the workers) and place them into your nest to boost the number. Most cases the existing colony will adopt them as their own thus increasing your colony faster. Like I said if you only have a queen you can only do the eggs and that because the other stages of growth require works to tend to and feed them.

[Gregory2455]

I find brood boosting very useful in a lot of cases. It is a must for parasitic species, and useful for some queens that are just too lazy to do any work after laying eggs. It is also helpful to speed up colony growth in small colonies. The one thing I do not suggest is boosting a queen that is doing a good job raising her own brood, as this slows her down.

[SweetDirtyTooth]

If done carefully I think this is really beneficial. It increases survivability and helps those new Queens. As long as you get them from a colony that has plenty then its fine. What I wouldn't like and I have seen it, is that sometimes people have some Queens in separate test tubes of the same specie and they take brood from all Queens but 1 and give the brood to that 1 Queen leaving the others helpless. But if taken from a wild colony that has loads of brood if removed carefully then that will be fine and really beneficial. Now I don't like the fact that some also destroy wild nest to steal brood, that's a NO NO!

[antscanada]

I agree with what has been stated above. It can really help rehabbing a queen with difficulties rearing her brood in the initial stages of colony founding.

I do remember though that it comes with some caution and risk, as a biologist pointed out that it could spread pathogens and disease onto your ants. A young colony may not be able to handle anparticular disease/pathogen like a mature large colony can so watch out.

I say to only do it in extreme circumstances where a queen that you known for sure is fertilized is having problems founding.

[LordAlza]

I brood boosted my Dorymyrmex Insanus queen with about 80 larvae, and a few pupae, and she had a super colony, and within 3 months, she began replacing them all with her own eggs, at a very abnormal pace. My brood boost was successful, so I recommend brood boosting for queens that are difficult to raise
(dorymyrmex insanus is not difficult) I was just impatient.

[KingAnt]

I've been debating doing this for my colony. So far it's just the queen and some eggs she has laid on her own. It's been about two weeks since she laid the eggs. I've yet to find a Camponotus colony yet to do this with though.

[Antscanada73]

Well it depends if you have a species where they can have more than one queen then your alright that's, but obviously there is the chance they are having trouble then brood boost them. I'm also agreeing that only do it in sevear cases or if you catch a wild colony that is doing bad then brood boost her. Overall I would say its OK but just don't go over the top with it.

[Rovvov99]

I only recommend brood boosting when you have a weak queen that doen't lay eggs on her own a lot. It isn't exactly "natural".

[aidan0616]

I have two pavement ant queens, the were both rescued by me from a swimming pool (I saved about 15 other pavement ant queens , but i only wanted to keep two). They both were happy and healthy, and had big clutches of eggs. this was about a month ago. I came back from vacation today and one of my queens had here first nanitic, and 3 or 4 other ones ready to "hatch" (This species doesn't cocoon). But the other one had fallen behind a lot. so i decided to brood boost her. There is a huge pavement ant colony in my backyard, in the garden, under a big rock. It was very easy to take the "pupa" from the colony (don't worry, that colony is huge, and I left plenty for them). This is what she has now...Over 50 "pupa" some eggs, and about 15 to 20 larva:

[ANTphibian]

I'm not exactly against it, but I wouldn't do it myself. I try to make my ant's experience as natural as possible. This is why I mostly use naturalistic setups. Obviously, it's not all about that (I feed dead food), but I still think that's it's important not to let your ants know they're trapped.