So recently I had found 2 deceased tetramorium atratulum (new state record!!) queens in my pool, as identified by you guys (thanks by the way ) After this I kept looking for more of these queens in hopes that I would find a living queen. Well this morning I found this beautiful gal in pool. She was walking around the moment I got her out. I noticed that she was already missing a wing, but I’m unsure on whether or not these gals bite off their wings until they find a host colony. I wanted to keep this journal separate from my other just out of the uniqueness of these gals.
Anyway I’m gonna need some advice on this, as I’m new to parasitic ants and very little is known on keeping these gals in captivity although I have seen some successful results.
I know that I need to get her some T. Immigrans callows, so I went out with my trusty aspirator and a shovel to where a large colony of T. immigrans was. I lifted the rock and found only a few baby larvae and some alates. So I started digging and digging and digging. I managed to dig into a solonopsis molesta colony that was most likely stealing from this colony but nothing else. Just more workers and more dirt.
I rinsed and repeated this for another colony as well with no luck finding any callows. So my question is that is there any easier way to find callows? And would the freezing the workers method work?
Currently the queen is in her own test tube setup eagerly awaiting her hosts.
Thanks for the help!
Edit: grammar
Edited by yibsi, July 11 2021 - 9:26 AM.