18 replies to this topic

[AntsBrazil]

I boosted my Solenopsis Saevissima queen and she had 3 workers, later in the same day when I checked only 2 and then 1 again. Now about 2 weeks later still with only 1 worker and some dead bodies... It's possible that the boosted worker is killing the ones that are born?

[AntLoverAdam]

I think that the boosted worker is just hyper and he/she can't stand the space and goes nuts, So yeah its probably killing the other ants.

[drtrmiller]

I think that the boosted worker is just hyper and he/she can't stand the space and goes nuts, So yeah its probably killing the other ants.

Are you speculating that ants become homicidal out of sheer boredom?

Edited by drtrmiller, December 1 2016 - 5:05 PM.

[CallMeCraven]

I think that the boosted worker is just hyper and he/she can't stand the space and goes nuts, So yeah its probably killing the other ants.

this must be a different way of ant boosting than I am familiar with . I want to see the needle used to "boost" an ant with steroids  .

[AntsBrazil]

Also I think that this worker is a major.

[MrILoveTheAnts]

Within all social insects there is almost always a scenario where the worker caste will out right murder or betray a reproductive queen if they feel the "female" isn't representing the reproductive potential of the colony enough. Basically they don't want to serve a failing queen when they believe laying eggs of their own (to produce their own sons) is a better option. Honeybee workers do this to "weak" queens all the time, where weak seems to be defined as a queen that lays fewer than 1000 eggs a day. Bumblebee hives are always founded by a single queen who's workers WILL TURN ON HER by the end of summer. In less social wasps "foundress" females go threw a similar change in social order at the end of their season. Workers may go on to lay their own eggs to produce males for the next generation, that mate with queens  1500 to 2500 is more normal. There are species of termites whose colonies are founded by individual queens but later, after she dies, they turn to developing their own queens that breed within the nest (termites have a different caste system). I am certain Ants have similar checks and balances on their reproductives.

 

When you boost a colony, the brood is coming from colonies that were able to attend them day and night and feed them a rich variety of foods. Then they get born into a colony that's just a queen and some callow workers. 

 

In some slave making species when Polyergus raid Formica nests, the "boosted" Formica workers they bring back tend to favor brood of their own species and will feed the Polyergus eggs to the developing larva the Polyergus bring back.

 

Boosting does and certainly can work, but these are better developed workers that likely have higher expectations of who should be laying the eggs.

Edited by MrILoveTheAnts, December 1 2016 - 6:40 PM.

[AntsBrazil]

What should I do? kick out this worker?

[MrILoveTheAnts]

Honestly I don't know what you should do.

 

I've had colonies that seemed successful, but the queen's own workers later killed her.

[AntsBrazil]

I guess I'll have to find another Solenopsis queen.

[Solenoqueen]

Did you boost with adult worker? Or did you have it as brood when you caught it... adult workers are loyal only to the queen they emerge pupae with.

[AntsBrazil]

I stole brood from another colony. I dug up another Solenopsis Saevissima right now, should I leave her inside a separate test tube(she probably had brood down there that I couldn't take), place the 2 queens together with the worker, remove the worker and leave the 2 queens + brood, remove the worker and the queen and leave the new queen with the brood from the other queen? A lot of options but I think that the worker may kill the new queen, I don't have a lot of experience to tell which would give me more success rate. Thanks.

[Serafine]

If you have issues raising Solenopsis you can try a multiqueen approach. Just put several queens (including brood) into one setup and wait. The workers will sooner or later kill all except one queen but chances are high that the surviving queen is fully capable of leading the colony for years.

Edited by Serafine, December 2 2016 - 4:04 AM.

[AntsBrazil]

Should I add this new queen to the setup with the queen and the worker?

[Serafine]

You can try but there is a chance that the worker will attack it. If you do it observe closely what happens for the next hours.

 

Btw, another thing I just thought of - what if the killing worker comes from a large colony and recognizes the hatching nanitics (because these definitely ARE nanitics) as weak/sick/crippled hatchlings that must be dispatched for the health of the colony?

Edited by Serafine, December 2 2016 - 4:43 AM.

[AntsBrazil]

You can try but there is a chance that the worker will attack it. If you do it observe closely what happens for the next hours.

 

Btw, another thing I just thought of - what if the killing worker comes from a large colony and recognizes the hatching nanitics (because these definitely ARE nanitics) as weak/sick/crippled hatchlings that must be dispatched for the health of the colony?

Could be but some of the other boosted workers also died even one that was bigger than the killer. What you think about removing this worker from the colony and leaving the 2 queens together ?

[Serafine]

Since the worker is obviously an issue I would remove it.

And btw, you do fed them (sugar and protein), right? Just to exclude that the worker isn't killing them for a meal.

Edited by Serafine, December 2 2016 - 5:45 AM.

[AntsBrazil]

Yes I provided spider leg, termites, some honey water and a piece of fruit(not at the same time). I'll remove the worker and introduce the new queen then, should I place some food for the queen?

[AntsBrazil]

The queens seems to be getting along with each other, there's I dead body very close to the cotton and the eggs, should I provide another test tube? Maybe they can use it for food.

[MrILoveTheAnts]

Upon thinking it over, boosting is something that should only be done if your queen loses her first brood and is going to fail.

 

Or if you have a queen that did fail it might be okay to give her brood to another queen of that species. This past summer I found a Camponotus chromaiodes queen starting a colony in a log. While out hunting I came across an empty founding chamber (... apparently wood peckers, rodents, and squirrel sometimes chance upon them) but the brood was still in tact. I collected the brood and gave it to the queen. Because the resulting workers to both batches of brood will be callow workers, they accepted the new queen as their mother, no questions asked.

 

In the wild something like this often happens. In areas where new queens will/can be successful it's often the case that several dozen queens of that species have all landed in that location. In some genera it's common for queens to band together during the founding stage, Solenopsis, Lasius, Myrmecocystus etc... Others though can be far more fussy about starting together. Tetramorium and a fair amount (most?) Camponotus queens will attack one another on sight. Once the first workers are born though they begin foraging and these young colonies inevitably find one another. They begin combining (boosting) into larger colonies for the first 4 weeks or so, but after that a few things start happening. The colony odor sets in, the workers become defensive about the colony they've created, and they begin showing aggression towards other colonies whereas before they were more than happy to share food.

 

Within some species there are populations that are very open to the idea of keeping multiple queens alive for longer than a year. We see this a lot in Solenopsis invicta. I've some Monomorium colonies have hundreds of queens in them where as others seem to have far fewer or likely just one I was never able to find buried deep within the nest. Lastly, unless the species is parasitic, like Formica or Polyergus, the newly formed colony will STOP boosting with the brood of younger colonies.

 

Every documentary on Myrmecocystus raiding weak colonies of their species and stealing the brood and repletes is wrong! They state that the brood is added and they used to think this was correct because of genetic studies showing the DNA of one colony comes from multiple queens. But they were wrong. What was happening was after the colonies of Myrmecocystus were founded the queens would spread out within the nest, basically claiming their own section to lay eggs within. When scientists were digging these colonies up (in 110F heat, threw rock hard desert soil and stone) they were finding the first queen they came across and stopping, forgetting that these nests typically go 11 feet into the soil!