Queen identification please - suspect Solenopsis

[Antloverhuman]

There's alot to read so i might have skipped some parts~
Do you plan to keep them all or only some or none?

If you want to keep some, i guess you could try to polygene the rest and see if it works. Because then (for eg: you try to polygene 4 queens and all of them fight and die) you'd still have some queens you can turn into a colony. You could also try with varying amounts of queen. Try two queens together along with three queens. Then you'll have a single queen colony, a two queen colony and a three queen colony. Then further if the two queen and three queen colony survives, you could merge them too while always having a single queen colony which you'll safely have

[Zacas1]

Not completely decided... my main hesitance is them being fire ants and potential risk of them getting loose regardless of any attempts of containment. So far I'm seeing how far they progress... so far having multiple pupae in each of the 5 tubes. I still have a 6th queen in an old fashioned ant farm that if the other 5 go south with possible attempt to combine that I could likely connect to the hybrid nest and see if they move into it.
My decision now is whether to connect the 5 test tubes using the 2 tube portals and other accessories now while there are no workers... or wait til each tube has a few workers moving about and see what happens as there'll still be the one queen as a potential backup.
I'm always so indecisive lol

[antperson24]

Not completely decided... my main hesitance is them being fire ants and potential risk of them getting loose regardless of any attempts of containment. So far I'm seeing how far they progress... so far having multiple pupae in each of the 5 tubes. I still have a 6th queen in an old fashioned ant farm that if the other 5 go south with possible attempt to combine that I could likely connect to the hybrid nest and see if they move into it.
My decision now is whether to connect the 5 test tubes using the 2 tube portals and other accessories now while there are no workers... or wait til each tube has a few workers moving about and see what happens as there'll still be the one queen as a potential backup.
I'm always so indecisive lol

Don't use AC plugs; small ants can easily walk right through them.

[Zacas1]

Yeah, still wondering how big the first workers will be.
And been wondering why AC didn't use the micropores on the plugs like they did for the portal top. Though there's always cotton, or possibly just use some silicone sealant on the plugs just for this since I do have others, and the portals should let in enough air to not be hindered by 3 plugs being sealed with silicone. Was planning on using the silicone to help keep the glass panel attached to the hybrid nest.

[antperson24]

Yeah, still wondering how big the first workers will be.
And been wondering why AC didn't use the micropores on the plugs like they did for the portal top. Though there's always cotton, or possibly just use some silicone sealant on the plugs just for this since I do have others, and the portals should let in enough air to not be hindered by 3 plugs being sealed with silicone. Was planning on using the silicone to help keep the glass panel attached to the hybrid nest.

I would just use cotton. Using silicone on the glass sounds good for Solenopsis.

[Zacas1]

Well here's what I rigged up for the eventual connection... without need for plugs at all, and ability to add a sugar water tube that may be disconnected to connect to the nest later...

[antperson24]

Well here's what I rigged up for the eventual connection... without need for plugs at all, and ability to add a sugar water tube that may be disconnected to connect to the nest later...

That looks like a good setup!

[Zacas1]

Thanks. Now the question is... should I wait to link the 5 tubes til there are a few active workers... or go ahead and try now before the pupaes start to 'wake up'. >.>

[antperson24]

Thanks. Now the question is... should I wait to link the 5 tubes til there are a few active workers... or go ahead and try now before the pupaes start to 'wake up'. >.>

I'd say now.

[Zacas1]

Welp, got them all connected late that night.. yesterday I noticed one queen move to the tube on the opposite side (instead of the one right next to hers)... the two queens didn't seem aggressive, and within an hour the one queen moved back to her own tube. That night after I got home from work, the same queen wasn't in her tube, but was back in the tube she visited, either she or the original queen of visited tube was dead (I assume the one that was originally in the tube is the survivor... as I figure it'd be weird for this species to abandon their own brood and take over the other... but who knows). I proceeded to, as carefully as I could, transfer the brood of the now queen-less tube into the tube of the queen that was right next to it (the first queen I found, who's brood was further along... as it has its first worker that woke up today)... and she seems to have accepted them into her own brood so far.