As some of you know (those who read my journals) I caught a mature colony of either tetratorium or aphaenogaster's + Queen.
I put them in a 10 gallon fish tank with a smaller shoe box container inside that --- another, smaller ant species seems to be living in there (but with no Queen, I got her out already).
Now, yesterday, there were a lot of male/female reproductives running around when I caught them --- now there aren't as many.
I'm seeing dead males and a lot of torn wings.
I woke up this morning an saw a Queen plastered to the side of the glass, dead and wingless. I was torn up
but then, just now I found another wingless Queen crawling up the glass and sitting there.
Could I have accidentally induced mating by digging them up?
There isn't enough room for a flight but the males could easy straddle the Queens and have the same 'effect' on the ground, right?
Maybe there's more Queens in there mated. I hope so because I would hate for the mated Queen to have been killed just a day after I got her
.
I put them in a 10 gallon fish tank with a smaller shoe box container inside that --- another, smaller ant species seems to be living in there (but with no Queen, I got her out already).
Now, yesterday, there were a lot of male/female reproductives running around when I caught them --- now there aren't as many.
I'm seeing dead males and a lot of torn wings.
I woke up this morning an saw a Queen plastered to the side of the glass, dead and wingless. I was torn up
but then, just now I found another wingless Queen crawling up the glass and sitting there. Could I have accidentally induced mating by digging them up?
There isn't enough room for a flight but the males could easy straddle the Queens and have the same 'effect' on the ground, right?
Maybe there's more Queens in there mated. I hope so because I would hate for the mated Queen to have been killed just a day after I got her
.
