Winged queens always die, how come?

[Polyrhachiskeeper]

Every time i catch a queen ant with wings, whatever the species, the queen dies the next day. And sometimes i see lots of dead big queen ants with wings (don't know for sure, could be wasps but they look like big ants). Why does this happen?

[SYUTEO]

The big dead ants might be Carebara males, male ants die after mating.

[SolenopsisKeeper]

Every time i catch a queen ant with wings, whatever the species, the queen dies the next day. And sometimes i see lots of dead big queen ants with wings (don't know for sure, could be wasps but they look like big ants). Why does this happen?

If you aren’t catching males, then the queens have some sort of pathogen or sickness. My winged queens are sometimes fertile. I have a Crematogaster queen with all of her wings who has pupae. I also have a Dorymyrmex bureni queen with all her wings… but she only got one worker. She ate her other larvae. My winged queens seem to always be bad mothers.

[Polyrhachiskeeper]

Weird that all the winged queens i catch have sickness.

[SolenopsisKeeper]

Weird that all the winged queens i catch have sickness.

Maybe even pesticides… maybe your Cotten is too moist so they get caught in it? I think you would notice… I have no idea I am just throwing random guesses

[Polyrhachiskeeper]

Could be pesticide but not the idea about the cotton. When i cuaght them they were in a normal container