Can queen ants that have mated still fly without shedding of wings?

[AntsDakota]

I mean it could be not mated.

[Hunter36o]

I caught a queen when in the process of mating with 2 males and attempted to fly when they both had finished mating with her. So for a time after their wings do work, which makes sense as they do need to fly away from where they mated to find a new home.

Side note. I have also noticed if you catch a mated queen who still has her wings attached, she will be less likely to shed her wings. I find it interesting because I can monitor how the wings act after their use is complete. It would appear they are slowly falling apart on their own. In my own opinion this would suggest that they have completely shut down and after the muscles have been broken down into soup the wings slowly rot away regardless. I'm looking forward to see how it pans out because in theory she shouldn't have actual scars but tiny wing stumps or similar because they are slowly falling off rather then being torn off. So her exoskeleton should not be as vulnerable as the average queen because part of it won't be ripped off.

[AntLandAustralia]

So I have a couple of quick questions if I may. I fully understand the differences between the terms but what I want to know is if a queen is fertile yet unmated, she can still lay eggs but those eggs due to being unfertilised will be male drones, correct?

Can those males then mate with and fertilise the queen so she can then start laying fertilised eggs and in turn hatch female workers thus beginning a new colony?

I ask because I caught a queen still with her wings and having no way to tell if she is fertile/infertile, fertilised/unfertilised. She’s in a test tube in a dark cupboard to see what happens. She is a Iridomyrmex bicknelli queen, how long should I wait before setting her free?

Thank you to any and all replies.

[JoeHostile1]

The males never mate with the queen inside the nest. The males fly away and mate with queen alates who flew away from their own nest.

As far as how long to keep the queen; if you feed her and she doesn’t just die you could keep her for a long time. I’ve had ants that didn’t lay eggs for 9 months, but that’s including 5 month hibernation. I also kept a queen ant for 1 year that would lay yellow eggs but never turned into larvae. Someone just posted recently that their queen finally laid eggs after 7 months, I can’t remember if hibernation was involved in that or not... but a lot of times if they are infertile they just end up dying within a couple weeks.