ANTSTORE World of Ants

[SteveUK28]

Hey guys...

A few of my nephews found a Lasius niger nest the other day and brought home an old pipe that was near the nest. when i moved it.. a bunch of ants came out which i believe was niger.. along with loads of cocoons, small ones that i thought was workers and larger ones that had to be male and queens.. Well i took a bunch of the smaller ones for my niger colony and put the rest back..
Well one has recently hatched.. and it looks a fair big larger than the niger wokers i have.. Do you think it is a Lasius niger.. and if not.. what is it? They certainly dont mind it at all and it sticks to the queen a lot.

[Skippy]

I think it is a male of Lasius niger ... , and I believe , tonight or at tommorow it will have wings

[SteveUK28]

they aint born with wings?

[Skippy]

no , they are not born with opened wings , wings are firstly only small and packaged ,later when is hemolymf (or blood or how you call it) coming into , then it is slowly opening into real wings (I believe you will understand )

[ratgreen]

yer the wings dilate (inflate) shortly after hatching.

[SteveUK28]

mm well if it is then its gonna have to go my colony cant sustain males

Just Wondering.. But do you think that all the cocoons i gave them are males? Is there any way to tell.. as if they are i could put them near a colony in the garden.

[highered]

From the picture most to all of those cocoons look like winged ant cocoons. The worker cocoons are white and maybe a bit bigger then a worker. The winged ant cocoons are a darker brown and much bigger then a worker, even the male winged ants. Its very hard to tell male and queen winged ants from their cocoons, but I think the queen's cocoons would be slightly bigger then the males.

[Skippy]

It is not rule male´s cocoons are more dark
on the picture you can see male cocoons , they are bigger like these worker´s cocoons. I´ve count there 8 male´s cocoons , so you can check it. How are they dark , it all depends only on how they are old. Cocoon is mostly more white , but when is pupae inside getting grey color , cocoon became darker

[SteveUK28]

Well a lot are greysh but there are others that are a cream colour and a little smaller

[JimmyVe]

In my experience you can not tell it on the colour of the cocoon, only on the size of it. Hard to keep male cocoons and queens cocoons from each other.

[KiamCameron]

I think that worker is bigger than all your ants as it was from the established nest so there gonna have bigger workers.

[SteveUK28]

well that pic was def of a male as skippy said it did develope wings.

[highered]

The point is that winged ant cocoons are always much bigger then worker cocoons, even the male ones. Worker cocoons are white, whereas winged ant cocoons are darker.

[SteveUK28]

no one was disputing that ????

[Skippy]

Worker cocoons are white, whereas winged ant cocoons are darker.

I wrote it is not true ... color depends only on how old cocoon is , doesnt matter if is it male or worker