ANTSTORE World of Ants

[4mykids]

Thanks for the help earlant -

Thanks Militant, I know you were pulling for a mated Queens as I was

I will besure to kep you all posted when they hatch.

[JimmyVe]

sure do, I'm interesting how the workers would look like.

[MilitANT]

@ 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 stopped reading here. The rest of the message couldn't be any nicer...

I hope things work out for you 4mykids! Will keep in touch with email.

[4mykids]

Ok, got an update for you.

That huge Queen mentioned here is still very much alive. She has abandoned her eggs she laid over a month ago - the eggs never got very big anyway. I may have stressed her out a bit with the pictures I took and all the moving. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

The good news is that she has laid about a dozen or so more eggs and I have kept her in the dark and only look in on her once a week. This has worked - I didn't realize she had eggs at all until I looked closer. I will not take any pictures until they hatch but will post here for sure.

[JimmyVe]

Sure do, can not wait for them to hatch.

[4mykids]

Hey guy's, I forgot about this thread - sorry. I don't want to stur up a mess here but the winged Queen I have is now one of many that I have that came from the same colony - I have had to be very carefull not to disturb these Queens because they kept eating the eggs after a while.

The eggs hatched a while back and they were all small black wingless ants - most of these queens I caught came from the same log and have a few small ants with them now after seperating them in individual tubes. but a few die and the others just sit there in the tube doing nothing.

Sorry for the delay but it is what it is guys - no mistake made on my part here. I helped my in-laws to remove a tree and cut up fire woods a few months ago and saw the same type of ants with well over a dozen winged queens - I never saw one queen without wings - anyway, some of them after a few weeks have eggs already, the others just sit there.

Hope this helps - I see these colonies all the time around here - they always have dozens of queens - You have to keep them seperate from the others for a long time and left alone before they start producing eggs of there own - I have sooo many of these Queens that I am actually bored with this species : )

[JimmyVe]

I'm not sure about it all, but i think this queens are not fertilized. They lay eggs but they only are going to produce males. There probably was a wingless queen in that nest. Could be you just mist her.

You can hold on to this queens but don't bet on them they will produce workers.

[4mykids]

Hello JimmyVe,

I am being misunderstood I think. I have held onto them and they have produced workers - small black wingless ants -

I have a lot of them -

Anyone here from PA that can relate?

[JimmyVe]

Oh okay, so now you have winged queens with workers or did they lose there wings ?

[4mykids]

I had to move a few of these Queens from the regular size tubes because they had trouble turning around but only had a few larger tubes so to help them turn around I cut the winges myself so they can move around the tube better.

What has happened with a few that I did not cut is that when the cacoons hatch, the workers are pulling on the wings (I guess to pull them off).

I have seen a couple once winged Queens that now only have one wing. Wether they did it themselves or had help I don't know - I don't have the time to sit there and watch.

[SteveUK28]

OMG... u removed the wings yourself.. how Mental.. ive never heard that or read that anywhere before.. sooo has to be a first and im sure prob not a good thing either. Anyway.. whats the chance of gettin some pics???

[JimmyVe]

I heard it before. It is not a good to do it. But it seems your queens survived it.

So it looks like they are all doing a good job than. Sad you can't sent ants to us

[tail__]

I have removed wings of my L. niger queen. Actually she has shed the small wings, but she couldn't remove the large ones, and stopped trying. After a few weeks, when she already had larvae, the wings became wrinkled and surely dead. I feared they could cause some infection. She is doing well now and is the mother of ca. 150 workers. So he wasn't the first one