Hey there. After lurking the forums for some time, I now finally came to make my second post!
Here's my concerns listed in numeric order.
1. I boosted my colony with a few wild-caught cocoons some months ago. They hatched and pledged their allegiance to their new queen without questions. The issue regarding this, is that I often see my original nantics bite and pull the new workers around. The new workers completely ignore this, but it seems like the nantics are somewhat against these new un-invited guests. What is going on?
2. Some of the boosted workers seem to have gone rogue. They dig their own tunnels in the basin, and doesn't interact with the colony at all. Is this normal behavior, or is it a result of the nantics driving them off into "the wild"? The boosted workers does not defend them selves, they don't attack each other, and they care for the queen. It's only the nantics that hate them.
3. My colony still lives inside their test tube, and as far as I can tell, everything is going fine. It's too crowded to actually see the queen, but I sometimes see a worker carrying a larvae or cocoon around. No eggs though. My third question is then; 99% of them spend 99% of their time inside the tube doing absolutely nothing. The just cling to the wall, move a pupae or two and that's it. Even though they are many, I rarely see them outside their tube. Is this normal behavior for other-than-nantic ants? Being lazy as I see it. Perhaps premature hibernation?
4. I feed them various dead insects as well as fruit flies. (The insects I bought from an online store). As far as I can tell, they do come out to forage since the food I give them is sometimes missing. Now today, I noticed that they'd made a pile outside their tube made out of dead moldy insects. As far as I can tell, the insects are whole (only the store bought insects) and they haven't eaten anything of them. So now I'm getting a bit worried, since I don't know if they feed besides the rare fruit flies I give them. (I feed them honey dew which they regularly visit, so I'm referring to the larvae mostly). Is it a bad sign that they bring food back, and then store it outside the tube for it to mold?
5. I'm going away this weekend, and so I would like to know some basics about how to care for my ants while I'm gone. I realize that these few days won't matter much as long as I leave water, honey and flies in the plenty, but I would like to know what I should do on longer vacations.
6. A Lasius niger care sheet would be greatly appreciated as well.
Thanks for reading my text-wall. I hope anyone can shed some light on my questions.
Seph0n.