Note: Reading this back I realize that it got a little long for an obituary and sounds a tad overdramatic so sorry in advance. I'm not going to change it since this is less of an actual journal and more of a funeral/obituary for me—only since she was my first queen ant. That being said feel free to read the following post if you want to.
Seven weeks ago I caught my first queen ant who I put in a test tube setup and have been doing weekly checkups on ever since. Last week, I saw pupae for the first time as well as many larvae and eggs. This week, I checked up on her hoping to see her first workers—who I found eating her corpse. I know that for some long time ant keepers here this is probably not a huge deal and you probably have lost countless queens in the past, however, since she was my first queen, I would like to make this post to remember her and to recount her journey.
August of last year was when I first became interested in ants, and over the winter I began considering catching a queen in the coming summer. I didn’t have any test tubes, but a science teacher, who I really like, actually lent one for me to use. At the time, I still didn’t even know if I would want to raise a queen or if I could even catch one, but either way I was still interested in ants and began to pay more attention to the ants I see every day. One particular day, I was looking at some random ant workers when one of them caught my eye. She was the same size as the workers nearby, and I almost missed her, however, I noticed that she had slightly different proportions so I decided to capture her. At this point I was pretty clueless on how to find and identify queen ants, so this happening was just pure luck. Fortunately, I did catch her and put her in my test tube with some water and sand.
A week later, I checked up on her to find a very neat egg pile. At this point, I was stoked and posted on here for help identifying her—to which I learned she was Nylanderia Flavipes. After that, I began researching the species where I stumbled across ANTdrew’s Nylanderia notebook along with other peoples Nylanderia journals which made me even more excited to keep them. As the weeks went by, she laid more and more eggs which began developing into larvae and eventually pupae. She also used the sand that was in her test tube to absorb some of the water and eventually to make a founding chamber against the cotton ball. Unfortunately, this week when I checked up on her, I found that she had died. I don’t know if it was the workers that killed her or maybe she just died and they ate her? But either way I was quite saddened by this loss and wanted to pay my last respects. As for the nanitics and brood, I decided to freeze them instead of letting them starve, although it was still a little hard for me to euthanize the first ant workers I ever had.
Sorry again if all of this sounds a little dramatic/exaggerated, but thank you for anyone who did read all this, I hope that my first queen is flying high right now (though she might need to find her old wings).
Week 0: [attachment=15367:IMG-5710.jpg]
Week 1: [attachment=15368:IMG-0981.jpg]
Week 2: [attachment=15369:IMG-4203.jpg]
Week 3: [attachment=15370:IMG-4332.jpg]
Week 4: [attachment=15371:IMG-1313.jpg]
Week 5: [attachment=15372:IMG-1475.JPG]
Week 6: [attachment=15373:IMG-4569.jpg]
Week 7: [attachment=15374:IMG-4758.jpg]
