My queens :(

Let us know of your ant colonies or queens that have passed away. We will grieve together but will also learn why your ants may not have succeeded.

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Cerbenix
Posts: 14
Joined: Tue Jun 05, 2018 3:06 pm
Location: Latvia

My queens :(

Post: # 36970Post Cerbenix
Tue Jun 05, 2018 4:08 pm

Hello.
I'll start with a little introduction of myself - I remember when I was little I wanted to have some kind of insects that I could care for. Not knowing what I was doing I remember scooping up a bunch of ants at the beach and keeping them in a bottle, of course they all died, because, you know, they kind have to have a queen with them. But for some reason last summer youtube decided to show a video from AntsCanada in my suggestion box so I watched that and probably like 10 others, I learned a lot. Later that week we had a pretty big rainstorm and that evening I went to capture some queens and was very surprised how easy it was. Anyway this is my adventure with them.

Last summer I got 2 messor barbarus queens, 5 lasisu niger and a camponotus herculeanus queen.
Some of the lasius queens didn't survive long enought to produce any eggs and I see my self lucky that 3 of them have colonies now. Unfortunately some of my test tubes that I was keeping all of them in, had run out of water during their hibernation while I was away from home at school. I had not checked on them for a long time and found that in one case 90% of her workers had died and in the other about 60%, the third one was fine. Sad to see my queens having to build up their colony once again. Now they are fine and working towards bigger colonies.

Now for the other sadder stuff. Unfortunately one of my messor queens died and the camponotus queen as well and I really can't figure out why. My camponatus queen, I think, was struggling from day one. She only laid like 3 eggs in her lifetime, they had grow a bit before they started to disappear one by one. Once all of them were gone I had to change her test tube because of mold. So I left her undisturbed for 2-3 weeks only to find that she had still not laid any eggs. After a week or so I found her dead. My though is that she suffocated? I had the test tube plug with cotton and I had that tube put in a cardboard square tube open side towards the back of the little box I had made. Not sure if that's what caused the death the cardboard tube isn't that well sealed.

The messor queen however was doing fine. Until recently she had a good number of workers and I had setup a outworld for the colony. It was a food container that I had punched some holes in the lid and poured some plaster as a floor. After about a month workers started to disappear until she was the only one left. At first when i notices that there were less worked I didn't think anything of it. But later I found her curled up, but still alive, she was moving around but it seemed like she couldn't straighten her body. And pretty much it looked like the last hours of her life. The next morning she had died. I did find some mold on the plaster that I had poured in the food container but could that have been the reason? I thought that mold could only hurt ants if they were living in it and touching it all the time.

Anyway if you have any ideas of what could have caused the deaths let me know. Fortunately the other messor queen is doing just fine and has a large number of brood and is starting to pump her worker numbers way up. But I'm scared now to introduce them to any kind of changes like an outworld or anything like that.

This year I'm probably not going to go out looking for queens, because I feel that there aren't that many interesting ones in my area other than the camponotus but learning that it takes them 2x as long to go from egg to worker ant it seems like it would take years to have them at a larger number. And I really don't have the patience if I already know that there are ants that grow a lot quicker.

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Rocko3016
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Jun 19, 2018 2:27 pm
Location: United States

Re: My queens :(

Post: # 38292Post Rocko3016
Tue Jun 19, 2018 2:31 pm

I give my condolences, may they Rest In Peace :(
Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest. Proverbs 6:6-8

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