Page 1 of 1

Graveyard - Nursery?

Posted: Tue May 08, 2018 3:53 pm
by Antella
Hey all,

Wanted to run this puzzzling situation accross your expertise and see what you might have to say. SO, I found a colony of tetramorium Sp. e. I carefully dug up quite a bit of the colony and put it into a huge 3 gallon jar. Now I never saw the queen I dont know if shes in there, but I did manage to get a huge collection of larvase and pupae, hundreds. Do tetra queens lay where the pupae and larvae are taken care of or is it a "far off" chamber?
Anyways I noticed that quite a bit of the larvae and pupae have been brought to the surface and discarded. Which is kind of to be expected since they are fragile and I did dig them up.
So then I put in a test tube with water for them to.. well drink.
Instead they start pilling their dead in there and close to the wet cotton, they also pile the pupae and larvae in there as well that I assumed had decised.
Well now this has happened a few times and Ive never really see an ant drink water from the test tube they just turn it into a graveyard. I keep removing and replacing with a clean fresh test tube.
But then today about 3-4 days after the "capture" of the colony and after three replacements of the water test tubes they are still continuing this behavior, but this time I was looking REALLY carefully, and while there were definitely dead ants in the test tube there were live ants seeming to "tend" to the pupae... :?: I'm totally not sure here what is happening, but they are either caring/praying for dead pupae or they pupae are alive.
Does this have anything to do with humidity maybe? Is the nest too dry that they need to bring the pupae up to where there is steady humidity from the wet cotton??

Also a lingering question. Is there any telling whether I have a queen in there? I would likely keep or release the colony independent of this knowledge but it would be kind of nice to know. Are there "signs" or evidence that the queen is alive?

Re: Graveyard - Nursery?

Posted: Tue May 08, 2018 6:33 pm
by antnest8
I do not know where the queen would be but my guess would be near the eggs

and for the Graveyard area i would keep it their and make sure the pupae are dead before throwing them away

Re: Graveyard - Nursery?

Posted: Tue May 08, 2018 7:41 pm
by averagebilly
I think that the pupae are still alive, and that they were just moved into the test tube for better humidity conditions.