ANTSTORE World of Ants

[KiamCameron]

People that have these have you ever thought you needed more slaves and found a formica fusca nest or other serviformica in the wild and let out some workers to raid the nest or is that quite impossible to make happen ?

[tail__]

I don't think anyone tried.. the ants need several days for reconnaisance and to get accustomed to new area, and during these days they would probably move out to more natural place

[Phasmid]

A large colony dosen't realy need slaves but it's more a thing of interest to have them and they help a bit. A small colony is more likely to do well if it is boosted with slaves.
To give slaves to the colony you can go out and find formica colony and collect lots of brood in a small container. You can't let some ants go into a nest and just steal brood because they need to size up the colony an see what would be the best entances to attack through etc. You can tip the brood into the nest. To make things much more interesting, you can collect some workers with the brood and place the container in the foraging area and watch the ants coordinate a raid.

[Ehx-ray]

Phasmid - Nice idea, I must try it. Sadly the fusca workers would die...

[JimmyVe]

Yes they will kill the fusca workers. (and i don't see why you should do that) you can take a bit of brood from a colony and give it to them so they have slaves, but why let them kill other workers just for your fun ???

[KiamCameron]

This was just a question whether they can raid or not I found out that they will only kill fusca workers if they try to do a defense... not all will die perhaps a few that start to attack them...

[KiamCameron]

Another question say like a colony is going to raid a fusca nest and the nest is producing cocoons that are male and young queens with wings what do the raptiformica do to the young queens and males do they kill them of when they hatch or accept them to work in the colony? offcourse the males die in a few weeks..

[JimmyVe]

As far as i know they know the difference between cocoons from workers and from queens. (or males) So they only take the cocoons from workers.