The AntsCanada Ant Forum's

So around two years ago i had caught 5-8 queens that were all Camponotus. after a few months they all were laying and eating. a few months after that they began slowly one by one lost interest in brood ,motor control, than balance. Shortly after all perished. The next year I used New glass test tubes and had no fatalities thus far with five ant queens into colonies. What did i do wrong the first time?
The second set I bother about once a month but the other was every two months.
Both in test tube set ups.
Both fed organic honey.
Used organic cotton.
same species.

What protein did you feed them?

Cricket leg

Was their mold or could the temperature have gotten too high?
Is there more information you can provide in regards to the first set of queen's you caught?
Was the food wild caught or store bought? Tho it is not completely inpossible to have gotten a bad batch from store bought food. It's not common but not impossible.

I had caught a Camponotus queen once (not the one I currently have) that seemed to be doing well, then she suddenly died. I didn't throw out her test tube setup right away, though, and when I came back a week or so later, there were a ton of tiny gnat larvae in there, crawling around and pupating. It was disgusting. I've actually had that happen with caterpillars before, the caterpillars pupated, then a few weeks later, a couple little holes appeared in their pupae, and there were a couple little red pill-looking things at the bottom of the jar. The pills hatched into flies a few days later, and I kept them for a while.

there are some species of flies that are parasites and well, you know, kill queens. It's disgusting and sad.