Hi All
So I had a Formica podzolia queen die who had brood and aprox 5 workers. So rather then let the workers die I decided to introduce them to another Formica podzolia queen I had. I avoided any I had with workers and picked a queen with just brood to avoid worker on worker flighting.
I removed the dead queen from the original test tube and taped the two tubes together with workers in one and new queen and brood in another. New queen ran in to new tube and a worker attached her biting onto her leg and chaos resulted. I quickly put the test tube in the freezer right on ice and put an ice pack on top. and watched very closely( please note I did not just put in regular fridge as I have tried this cooling method before and in queen or worker not cooled quick enough or not sleepy enough bad things happen.
The Queen and worker flighting slowed (worker let queen go) and I left until queen and most workers actually fell over completely asleep. Then immediately removed the tube from the freezer( much longer could have killed them so do not walk away if you try this).
I placed in a dark place and watched (within aprox 10 min the queen and workers woke up. She went back to original test tube and them workers slowly went over to her. She and workers interacted with no biting and after aprox 30 min I was pretty sure it had worked. Now the workers are taking care of her brood and helping her:).
