ANTSTORE World of Ants

[jeoff82]

Got a Lasius niger queen delivered yesterday with one worker and a few eggs. How long do the eggs take to start developing? They left the test tube after a few hours and the queen had buried herself over night in the ant farm and the worker is foriging around. Both worker and queen ate loads of sugar water til the point they where both bloated. Now the queen has disappeared underground how long should I expect til I start seeing other workers?

[jartok]

takes round 2 months from start to finish but you wont see many workers this year really if its a new colony as they will only come out at night. best to keep new lasius niger colonies in test tube for upto 1.5 too 2 years

[Trip33]

2 months? my eggs have been sittin in the tube for over 4 months and none of them are even brood yet =( is there a problem with my queen?

[jeoff82]

What stage are they at, just eggs? They might just be food for the queen. Give her some sugar water and see hows she gets on. My queen that was in a tube fed on sugar for about 3 hours until she was bloated and then left the tube and buried herself in the farm.

[jartok]

i had 8 layed and 7 weeks later there all running about healthy same with my rubra just had 60odd pop up in 2months

[JimmyVe]

In normal conditions it should take about 4-6 weeks. That means when the temperature is good and the nest is moist enough and there is enough food. Lasius niger are easy so they adept pretty fast to temperature and stuff. If the first workers dont hatch after 2 months there is a big change the queen is not fertilized.

Dont forget they hibernate so that period doesnt count.