Two queens one keeps laying males what do i do

[InsaneWind]

Hello,

I am new to trying to care for ants and i got into this entirely by accident. I was given a gaming table that flips from Pool to Air hockey and well in the score slider i had found carpenter ants and some brood. I thought i might have two queens and well i am right i do have two queens however one is clearly not producing workers but instead male ants. I do not know which of the two queens is only producing males but i wish to seperate her from the other queen to ensure that i do not a huge amount of male ants in the colony as the males seem to be trying to breed with the brood and the workers are spending a lot of time and energy pulling the males around and actually pulling their wings off.

I would really like some advice here as im lost at what to do about this very odd situation.

Also how would i go about finding out which queen is laying the male eggs?

[AntsLuxembourg]

Hello,

I am new to trying to care for ants and i got into this entirely by accident. I was given a gaming table that flips from Pool to Air hockey and well in the score slider i had found carpenter ants and some brood. I thought i might have two queens and well i am right i do have two queens however one is clearly not producing workers but instead male ants. I do not know which of the two queens is only producing males but i wish to seperate her from the other queen to ensure that i do not a huge amount of male ants in the colony as the males seem to be trying to breed with the brood and the workers are spending a lot of time and energy pulling the males around and actually pulling their wings off.

I would really like some advice here as im lost at what to do about this very odd situation.

Also how would i go about finding out which queen is laying the male eggs?

Ok so first you need to catch both ants including the brood. Next you need to just seperate them both and hope that you guess correctly which of them got the males. One way to see this early on is if your queen is just laying eggs and doesn't keep them in a bundle / pile but rather scatters the eggs around.

That is usually a sign for an infertile queen. You could split up the brood piles and each time a male alate emerges, you could either release it into the wild or kill / feed it to some spider or other animal. Sounds brutal perhaps but those are the options.

I would focus on identifying the infertile queen. I wish you best luck and if you need further help or advice, let us know.