Very small new generation of Crematogaster Scutellaris : why?

[Cylvouplay]

And it's a pain after when I read my post to have some horribly wrong spellings like "right know" instead of right now... I got used to longer time to make some editing... I'm aware it is used by some to hide their crimes or destroy interesting discussions so it's OK this way.

No other ideas about why my ants are smaller than normal?
Last generations were made of normal sized (even some major) and still a proportion of small ants, I'm almost sure the small ants are coming from the same satellite nests (the main nest is too small and the girls have colonised other places, first it was to lay there doing nothing without clogging the streets, then eggs had to be carried there, then later some pupae and then it started. Well at least that's my intuition when I try to remember all what happenned right before it all started to get weird with ant's size. So my new theory is : when it's crowded, more eggs and pupae are raised from secondary nests and in secondary nests, the regularity of food supply is not very good. That's why, more than the height of the cellar inside the small outside nests, I have those small ants suffering malnutrition during pupae growth. And that's why undersize is very irregular, depending who is getting too few "foodage". The forgotten ones are the very small.

I recently lost my smartphone to some unusual bug, so no pictures possible right now, but one day I'll show you how cute these undersized girls are. We usually don't really have child ants, as it's not really "ants" but pupae of ants. But for the first time with these cute nanitics, I see ants that resembles "baby ants" as I would picture myself how they would look. But because of the expected alates nuptial flight, I tried to force some more food reaching the secondary nests in case it changes something. Then I'll probably let the girls malnourish their offshoots as much as they want (assuming that may be the reason of the size) to keep the diversity and cute nantics. One very big difference is the head. While all Crematogaster S. do have all almost the same head's size apart from gyne and male, these undersized sometimes have very tiny heads, in addition of short-shape (in lenght) and smaller parts. It's because reduction of the lenght often is stronger than reduction of parts size that it looks childish/baby proportion. The cutest moment is when they get angry after me for some reason (when I drop some food or change their environment) and threaten me with their raised abdomen, going crazy in all directions in search of the alien cause of the mess. It's strange oxymoron to watch the frail nanitics looking like baby ants acting as if they were great warriors with such commitment!

[Cylvouplay]

Crematogester S; are very touching in general, because in addition to their natural cuteness they do show some individualistic behaviour, you really feel they are all very different in personality, depending their personal history and natural character. More than many other species indeed. But still a complete commitment for the sisterhood, not hesitating even a second to self sacrifice to save others, but they even look very affectionate for one another as they are able to clean each other with apparently some real tenderness, they always seems to be troubled when finding a dead sister, even worried when seeing a dying one, and compassionate with injured ones. It could be projection but I don't think so, I'm convinced they really face fear when observing that injuries or death happen to their sisters, I'm pretty convinced they understand it could happen to them even if I don't imagine them THINKING about it. I'm only talking about the feelings. My position is one need words to think and they don't have, but they do feel with much more subtlety than many other insects according to what I observed. They do in particular show GREAT SADNESS sometimes, I've saw ants who had too difficult time, too early in their life, just let themselves die, unable to recover from sorrow or injury (depressed ants). Like in case of long distress (isolated from sisters, feeling lost for a long time) or in case of a leg cut. If the middle leg is cut, on one side, I've seen ants recovering with bravery and despite pain. Others do give up with life when facing the difficulties. When brave, you see the girl unable to stand in a stable posture to clean herself during the first 24 hours, falling many times. Then she learns and function normally after that. They don't give up when loosing an antenna, they are just very troubled the first day,failing to clean it. Then learn and feel ok. I never saw a girl missing both, I don't know if they can survive but I doubt. They almost never survive a back leg missing and if they do, not for long (while middle leg is really forgotten after sometime). And I doubt they could survive a front leg missing. Abdomen injuries are pretty bad, usually they seems to first act worried but not depressed when the social stomach was popped and abdomen is flat. But I never see such injured ant survive more than 24 hours despite their first optimistic idea. When it's only the exoskeleton that is deformed and flattened (crushed or damaged) but stomach are fine, then they may die sometimes, but some ants do recover completely after I reshaped the exoskeleton. It's not easy as any mistake may lead to scratch what is left. I just push on the stretched and outspread borders, the same way I would do to reshape any flattened plastic bottle to try to push it back in it's original design. It's never perfect, but I'm confident it saved the life of some ants that had no inside injuries, but the flat shape of their abdomen would have been too bad.
Other problem is they don't swim at all,and can massively die in water and sugar-rich or sticky liquids too (sticked into syrup or raw egg). They sometime recover but it needs some soft shower if sticky, and some patience (need time, only after long time drying will the girl wake up) and it's a dangerous moment when she comes back to the nest, if inert, it may be dropped as a dead ant, if awake, it could be attacked as a foe if odour has been erased by the shower. Then the girl will defend herself and one may die and both may be badly injured. It's better if you are there to watch with care and stop any dangerous behaviour.
I observed the girls like to keep doing the same job. If I change their foraging workplace, they will come back to this new one after they went back to the nest, instead of going to their own first place. This is strange if you consider they would usually not change at all by themselves but once changed, adopt the new place as their. I know this because I used colour markings on ants to see how their affectations vary.