4 replies to this topic

[FelixTheAnter]

I have a Myrmica Rubra colony, I bought it with 3 queens and 25ish workers. They've had a nice brood pile going, and today I checked for the first time in about a week...and saw a bunch of drones.



I was really excited about having a 3 queen colony, I love these guys. But I'm guessing this means at least one of the queens is infertile? A colony this small wouldn't be producing for the upcoming nuptial flights, right?

Which leads me to...how do I find out which of the queens is infertile? Do I have to seperate them into 3 separate brood-less colonies to see which ends up producing alates?

And if it turns out only one is infertile, can I recombine the two fertile colonies or would they fight?

[ZTYguy]

You can simply leave them together, there is no need to stress them out by separating the queens. Either the colony will cull this queen later or you’ll just have a colony with that queen. 

[FelixTheAnter]

Is it not a lot of work for the colony to be constantly caring for/producing drones?

[LowQualityAnts]

Is it not a lot of work for the colony to be constantly caring for/producing drones?

If a colony thinks taking care of a queen or some males is too resource intensive, they will usually kill them. It is also likely that the colony letting their unfertilized eggs mature was just a one time fluke.

[FelixTheAnter]

Interesting, thanks. I just spoke to the guy I got them from, and he said these 3 queens & the workers came from a much larger many-queen colony that was split up. Perhaps they actually are all fertile, but producing alates because they were part of a larger colony?

Either way I'll leave them be and see what happens. Thanks guys