ANTSTORE World of Ants

[AntEggs]

I was wondering if anyone who has a Oecophylla colony, manages to have the colony to produce the reproductive castes (winged virgin queens and males). I would very much like to see them being produced in my Oecophylla smaragdina colony. Does anyone have experience and tips?

The climate will definitely be an issue, change in relative humidity and temperature.
The colony size seems important (the number of workers). I read in The Ants by Holldobler en Wilson that when a colony is severly reduced in numbers, the colony goes back into a growth stage and then they don't produce the reproductive castes.
Also the age of the queen. With Oecophylla longinoda it would take even up to 2 years after colony founding by a new queen that reproductive castes are produced.

Luckily I know that my colony was producing reproductive castes in the wild (I got it recently, and the start of the period for producing the reproductive castes is now, February/March). My colony has about 12000 workers (60 test tubes with each about 200 worker ants; minor and major workers).

Perhaps someone manages this with other species. Advice from other species may be very inspiring!

I hope someone has some good tips. Many thanks in advance!

[baumarkthammer]

Do you have a colony of Oecophylla smaragdina?

What do you need the winged ants for?
In species like both Oecophylla sp. the swarmflights are made by a very larg number of ants so that you couldn´t probably let them make a swarmflight in captivity and the males and wiged females would be killed or die.

A colony of 12000 workers however should produce males and winged females already, mostly dependend on the quantity of food they get.
The time 2 years you mentioned for a freshly found colony is right for probably most of the non-european ants. However it sounds as if your colony once was bigger. Reducing the colony in numbers can have two major meanings for the producing of winged ants. It is possible that there will still be very many winged ants as well males as queens because the queen´s biological rhythm is still on the stage as it was when the colony was bigger. That means that she will lay many eggs and will consume large numbers of food what could as well result in the queen having trouble reducing the quantity of eggs layed, that could have negative consequenzes. That is the major reason why it isn´t always good to buy colonys that are taken out of nature with many workers.
The other option is that she will, as you said, start producing workers only.

But I´m not totally sure how the decision is made whether a larvae gets a worker or a queen.
For example in Myrmica rubra colonies it is possible that a larvae that could get a queen only becomes a worker because there is a competition within the larvae ant they harm each other so that they have less concurrency.
However that is rahter rare within the Formicinae or at least I can´t imagine that it works that way in Oecophylla colonies.

A picture of the colony would be very nice though.