1 reply to this topic

[ckubrick2]

Hi everyone!  This is my first post.  I live in Miami Beach and just bough an Omni Nest large and finally was able to get a Pheidole megacephala queen, some eggs and larvae, and about 30 workers and 6 soldiers into the outworld.  The workers started by sort of covering the queen with the eggs and larvae, maybe because of the light.  The workers explored the outworld but were very shy about going down to the nest chambers and hydration area. Little by little the workers started heading down there and about 2 hours later there were like 10 by the hydration area and more coming.  The 2 of the soldiers went to the hydration area and headed back quickly to the outworld and started recruiting and moving the eggs and larvae down to the hydration chamber.  As most of the workers and soldiers are doing this, once they took about half the eggs and larvae, the Queen then moved to by herself down to the hydration area.  The ants all crammed the larvae, eggs and themselves right to the metallic mech separating the water medium from the chamber, the queen also did this after a while.  Next morning I wake up and the queen is cut into 3 pieces in the middle of the chamber while the worker and soldiers remain crammed with the eggs and larva in the same place.  Does anyone have experience with this type of thing and can maybe shed some light as to that behavior.  I searched on the internet to no avail.  Thanks!

[dspdrew]

I don't think you're going to find an exact answer. It's usually kind of a mystery why workers sometimes kill their queens, especially without knowing everything about your setup, and situation. Sometimes the queen just dies for other reasons, and the workers dismember her once she is dead. I have a feeling the latter might be what's happening most of the time in cases like this.