queen ant rivals

[KdenKden]

So I put multiple queens together in a single test tube and the colony was going good, it reached up to 15 worker ants before the colony started dwindling down. 4 queens have died and im assuming the worker ants killed them off or they were fighting the other queen ants. Now my colony has a total of 3 workers and 2 queens. Is this natural and will my colony survive? Any tips on how to improve growth and survivability? Ants are Pheidole Sp.

[KdenKden]

Queens all died to beheadings.

[AntnoobSG]

This also happened to me.The queen that my queens beheaded probably wasn’t fertile . The beheaded queen ( before it was beheaded)kept trying to escape.

[AntsDakota]

So I put multiple queens together in a single test tube and the colony was going good, it reached up to 15 worker ants before the colony started dwindling down. 4 queens have died and im assuming the worker ants killed them off or they were fighting the other queen ants. Now my colony has a total of 3 workers and 2 queens. Is this natural and will my colony survive? Any tips on how to improve growth and survivability? Ants are Pheidole Sp.

What species are they? A lot of species are pleometrophic, meaning their queens found together and then after workers arrive, the queen will either kill each other or the workers will kill all but one queen.

[AntsDakota]

A lot of Pheidole species are polygynous, but since there are over 2,000 species and sub species in the genus, there ought to be quite a few that are pleometrophic.