ANTSTORE World of Ants

[MrNixy]

Hey long time no post.

I captured 6 Lasius niger queens a few days ago in the swarm and put them all in the same container (to be seperated later into individual test

Today I remebered that I had to move the queens out into the test tubes so opened the container hoping that they had not all killed one another, to my pleasent surprise they where all fine... but... there is now a huge pile of eggs, all piles up together, obviously the product of 6 very busy queens, I watched them for a little to see what was going on and to my shock rather than fighting over eggs they where helping eachother out.

My main question is, i'm guessing this behaviour will stop as soon as the first workers are born (workers normally kill any other queen that is not their own queens correct?) but just want this confirming.

Also, the queens should be able to adopt any of the eggs so sharing them out as equally as possible should be fine? I don't want any of them to die off because one queen stole all the eggs.

Kind Regards,
MrNixy

[JimmyVe]

This is a very normal behavior. They will do just fine until the first workers hatch. If you are unlucky they kill all queens. I'm not sure if they queens will accept each eggs. (if they are not there own) but i think that they will.

[highered]

Yes queen ants do except eggs, if they are lucky enough to be given them. It does make their lives easier. I have done this with queen ants many times. Its the workers that refuse other eggs.