Hello all. I am BRAND NEW to this ant keeping thing. I actually just purchased my first camponotus floridanus queen ant through the GAN Project in fear I would not find any mated queens this year being brand new at it.
I walk out on my porch tonight around 10:30 pm and I see a bunch of tiny insects on the wall by the light. At closer look they were definitely winged ants! I start to look around and notice that just a few of them are about 4 times the size of the rest. Queens, maybe?? I grabbed some tubes and got to work collecting them hoping they have mated. I don't know why but I decided to look down around on the ground and see one of the bigger ones crawling around like crazy with no wings! I'm thinking she has to be a mated queen.
In all I grabbed 7 of them just in case they are actually queens. The mid section is pretty big compared to the rest of them and especially to the other smaller ones that were out there.
After getting them all properly tubed up with water and cotton I snapped a pic of the one with no wings. I'm thinking they may be camponotus but they are most definitely smaller than the one I purchased. But have also read that there are so many types of them and some are extremely small.
Anyways, can someone help me make sure it's definitely a queen and ID her? Sorry for the pic it's the best I could get. Thanks!!
It won't let me upload the picture for some reason. Tells me I am not permitted to upload this kind of file. It's jpg lol. Image can be viewed at https://ibb.co/gx9GWT
Edit: I ended up going out again and seen another of the bigger ones running around on the ground. Best measurement I could get from them being in the tubes is about 6mm in length. I snapped a photo of the second one with no wings and got better quality pic for you guys
Edited by JustinC621, May 18 2018 - 8:59 PM.
