Now, lets start off with a little backstory.
Dspdrew collected over 20 of these queens, and not one managed to succeed. Eggs, and this will play a key part later on, is the furthest they went to.
Next, some Carebara thief ants in Africa are only able to raise colonies with workers from their parent colony, and the workers climb aboard for the ride of their life, before evntually taking care of the queens brood. So, I was wondering if possibly this species takes advantage of a similar behavior? The queens are very large, and the workers small, so I don't think it would be impossible for a couple workers to hitch a ride.
Drew stated that he mainly saw his queens simply cleaning their abdomen, and not really tending their eggs. Well, if they are programmed to only have workers tend their eggs, how would they be able to do so? This could explain why the eggs never developed, and why so few laid eggs.
I am hoping to be able to catch a flight of this species next year, in fact, they are my number one goal, so that I can hopefully prove/disprove this theory, and at least get a colony of them out of it.
I don't know much about those Carebara colonies, but, maybe, not all queens end up with little hitchhikers, and thus, only the ones that do survive and go on to raise colonies. Drew collected many of these, as I said, however, I think it possible that the ones who were already in the process of digging could have possibly had their hitchhikers dismout to assist in the digging, and therefore never be found.
Any thoughts on this matter would be appreciated, and I may be going crazy here, but, if in the tiny chance that I am right, I can at least prove I was the first one to post about it here. 
Edited by NickAnter, August 29 2021 - 1:50 PM.
