ANTSTORE World of Ants

[4mykids]

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Hopefully you can see this - notice the egg on her back.

[4mykids]

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Notice on the left hand side of the container she in in. There is a dead carpenter ant so this will help with the size comparison.

[JimmyVe]

Looks like an ants but the pictures are not very clear.

[4mykids]

Hello JimmyVe,

I'll fool around with my camera a bit to better understand taking pictures so they will improve

[Varban]

Is there anyway to see your albums without having to register?

[4mykids]

Hi Varban,

I re-posted a few of them on the pictures and video section of this forum if this helps

[Dr.House]

yeah perfekt, thanks ... I could see the queen yesterday, but the pic were so damn tiny.
Now you managed uploading it, thanks for trying so hard to do!

[JimmyVe]

You are doing a great job for your age 4mykids. lol (just kidding, because the other day you sad you where feeling old )

[4mykids]

C heers

[earlant]

This "queen", surely a carpenter ant, has its wings still attached. So she probably is not mated and will not be able to produce female offspring (workers). It may happen that she rears a few males, but then will die.
Sorry for the bad news.

Earlant

[MilitANT]

This "queen", surely a carpenter ant, has its wings still attached. So she probably is not mated and will not be able to produce female offspring (workers). It may happen that she rears a few males, but then will die.
Sorry for the bad news.

Earlant

On the contrary! I had a tetramorium Queen who never removed her wings and she successfully raised a colony before being killed by other ants. Some times Queens are interrupted after their mating flights and they forget to remove their wings.

If she lays then there's a strong chance she is mated. And she is absolutely huge from the looks of it.

[Arcais]

I was looking for ant pics online and found this one:
Definitely looks like your new friend

[Skippy]

@Arcais

I think-I am sure ,it is picture of Camponotus vagus

[earlant]

@ MilitANT

On the contrary! I had a tetramorium Queen who never removed her wings and she successfully raised a colony before being killed by other ants. Some times Queens are interrupted after their mating flights and they forget to remove their wings.

If she lays then there's a strong chance she is mated. And she is absolutely huge from the looks of it.

Ok, if you believe so, it is certainly true (for other readers: this is sarcasm!).

I am so tired of always trying to give correct advice and explanations, only to see other users with little experience countering with a rare, exceptional instance. It is absolutely not by chance that I wrote: “So she probably is not mated”.

I am a professional myrmecologist with about 45 years of experience with keeping and even breeding many species of ants over generations. I have checked thousands of gynes by dissectioning them and looking for the presence of sperm in their spermathecae. Dealate ones that were mated, or sometimes unmated, alate ones that usually were unmated and very rarely were mated. The by far most frequent instance is that alate gynes lack sperm in their spermathecae, hence are unmated and will not rear female progeny.

Meantime, after a couple of years being active in various forums, I have largely stopped giving advice in a number of frequent questions, exactly because of such “counterarguments” as yours. From now on I will also refrain from commenting on alate “queens” and their abilities to start a colony.

Go ahead keeping such ants and try to find out what will happen. Unfortunately it is another frustrating experience that most ant keepers then do not report the failure of such “experiments”. As a consequence, such misleading statements as yours are the ones that accumulate in the forums and in the memory.

Good luck to 4mykids,

Earlant

[JimmyVe]

You got a point there Earlant, it is not pleasant to keep answering the same questions, but i think MilitANT did not mean it in a bad way.
We ( I ) sure appreciate you professional comment.