April 28 2022
A lot of these kind of nests. There was definitely bigger ones but I didn't want to be in the woods and swarmed by the workers so I stayed in the open, which made it easier to spot de-alates too.
This photo shows the size differences between the castes
A queen digging a chamber
3 queens fighting to get into this chamber
Final count - 23
I was very limited on time because I was leaving the area that very day. I considered myself to be very lucky that they flew on the very day I was there in the area. I was told of this spot so it wasn't by pure luck that I found so many. I could have easily collected thousands of alates if I had more time but I was told to only collect de-alates so I spent about a hour walking around picking up de-alates.
May 07 2022
17 of 23 are still alive. All are singles accept two are a pair. I think all of them have fungus. Maybe 1 doesn't. This one is the biggest fungus. Yes. This is my current set up. I wasn't expecting to find so many queens. I was actually expecting to be given a colony when I was in Texas but they flew instead. So I’m well under prepared with any set ups so I had to do with what I had which was cups and sand. Now I am too worried about moving them to plaster. I will wait until their fungus are bigger.
May 13 2022
Actually. It’s 18 of 23 are still alive. I decided to merge my queens into pairs. Why? Because I didn’t want to buy that many containers. Doubling the odds of the a colony surviving. And because exactly half of the queens didn’t have a fungus garden. So this merge took place exactly two weeks after their initial flight and it’s now been almost 24 hours and no one killed each other
Edited by aznphenom, May 13 2022 - 2:14 PM.
