December 4, 2020
Right after the last update about 2 weeks ago, this colony began to have a rather large die-off of which I do not know the cause. It looks like they lost over a hundred workers out of the ~500+ they had at the time. I happened to have made a DIY nest for them that I was planning on moving them into eventually, but upon seeing that they were dying in such large numbers I immediately added some final touches to their new nest (a coat of blue paint) so that I could move them in immediately, hoping a new nest would stop their die-off. After moving them I'm happy to say that the die-off has stopped. I think a big possibility of what could've killed them was the fact that their outworld doesn't have any sort of ventilation, so maybe the air in their setup just got really gross. I should probably fix that.
I did a new worker count, and just like in the last update, the colony has just over 500 workers. So, if the die-off hadn't happened, I think they'd have 600-650 by now.
![wVNWwDZ.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/wVNWwDZ.jpg)
![TVFdlwa.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/TVFdlwa.jpg)
![laLCDVm.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/laLCDVm.jpg)
In the first picture below there is a wingless female reproductive who I am pretty sure has not mated because of her worker-like behavior and her skinny gaster which is clearly not producing eggs. I do wonder if she'll eventually mate and become an egg-laying queen; same goes for the other females. There hasn't been any mating yet from what I can tell.
![YeE80ZI.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/YeE80ZI.jpg)
![236YEui.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/236YEui.jpg)
![CDGeyq7.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/CDGeyq7.jpg)
![MU8UEZS.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/MU8UEZS.jpg)