4 replies to this topic

[Zen]

I had 2 Veromessor pergandi queens housed in one test tube, they supposedly are highly polygamous and so I thought it would be fine and it was they raised brood together and had a few workers when things went south. The workers died strongly with Limbs scattered around the rest tube as if they had been fighting I did my best to clean the bodies out of the test tube to prevent rot but some was spreading anyways so I attached another test tube to the first one and hoped they would move to a cleaner environment. I woke up this morning checked on them and my queen was legless and antennaeless and dead the other one is seemingly fine and their last worker had been eviscerated, all brood is all dead. Things really went to hell

[Alexandrehb]

Actually a similar thing happend to me when i joined up some pheidole pallidula queens i had caught a day prior(this was two years ago),
Everything went well until pupae started to apear and the 6 queens that were working together just started fighting until only 2 were alive and seemed to be cooperating, however the queens killed all of their pupae larvae and ate their eggs,after the traumatic event...
Then they never seemed to be able to found a colony so i just released them into a wild nest were they were actually accepted...

[Zen]

My now single queen has moved the bodies near the entrance of the test tube and is raising her own brood. She seems well enough and I will remove the bodies from the test tube shortly

[ponerinecat]

veromessor tend to do that to one another

[Mercutia]

Sometimes queens just don't play nice together, polygynous or not.

Edited by Mercutia, July 22 2019 - 9:44 AM.