7 replies to this topic

[William. T]

Things are really looking bad. My queens are dying one by one, with the survivors having shrunken gasters. I have three queens left from the whole batch. The queens lay a lot of eggs, but the egg piles keep dwindling. In a last ditch effort, I put two queens together. They were collected at the same flight, and look exactly alike, except one has a slightly larger gaster and doesn't have eggs. The smaller gastered one has eggs. I put them together for a few minutes with no adverse effects. The introduced queen is cleaning herself and is even tending the brood. IS this a correct decision?

Please put why this is a good/bad decision.

[Ants4fun]

If they're getting along, then I say go for it!

BTW you might want to feed them a bit of honey or something, just to get there energy up.

[Crystals]

Most Lasius will only have one queen in the end.

I tend to feed all my queens, even if they are semi-calustral.  A drop of hummingbird nectar onto a tinfoil food "bowl" twice a week.  Some queens accept dead flightless fruit flies.

[Jonathan21700]

From my experience Lasius sp. queens don't get along very good. I vote would say no.

[William. T]

Update: The queens are still not killing each other. The brood, which was once all over the place, is now in a neat pile. Say, don't even monogyne queens even congregate in the beginning to give the colony a boost and then the weaker queen is killed?

[Crystals]

Say, don't even monogyne queens even congregate in the beginning to give the colony a boost and then the weaker queen is killed?

I see this commonly in Lasius.  They get along to start with but around the time the first workers eclose or shortly after queens start dieing.

[Gregory2455]

It depends. When they get workers, one will die. if you are okay with that, instead of having two colonies, then keep them together.

[William. T]

The queens seem to get along now...Really, if it wasn't for the fact the queens kept on dying, I wouldn't have tried this method. I will be giving them some honey tomorrow.