4 replies to this topic

[Abadayos]

Good evening. I have finally had my queen move into her new nest and everything is going good. I got the colony a woody (small cockroach) and they seemed to love it, as did the queen as she came out and ate some of it herself. Now I've gone back into look in on them and found her munching on the gaster of a worker and, literally chowing down on the ant

Now I've never actually thought about it but I guess cannibalism could happen in an ant colony that's underfed, however they have eaten a woodie, a mealworm and some honey water in the past 24 hours. They are Camponotus consobrinus if that helps, banded sugar ants. I'm a little ticked off that she has killed a worker as they take months to grow to full size and that would make the second one to die, dropping the colony from 9 workers to 7, though there is a pupae looking like it's a few days out from eclosing so that's a bonus.

Anyways has anyone seen their queens or other ants eating or executing members of the colony? It's new to me so looking for osme insight. Should I feed them more? Could it be from lack of food or could it be some other unknown reason? They are all the same colony also with no brood boosting or anything like that.

Cheers

[dspdrew]

I've had queens eat workers before. It's hard to say exactly why, there could probably be a lot of reasons. Just keep them well fed and don't stress them out too much.

[Abadayos]

I think it could of been stress if anything to be honest as I recently changed the colony from a test tube to a nest + outworld. It took them about a week to move out but it could be adapting to new surroundings? I'm leaving them be for today and will look in on them tomorrow and see what happened in the mean time. Cheers Drew

[CoolColJ]

probably sick workers or dying ones

[PwnerPie]

Generally they eat workers if they are dead or pretty much dead. My thought is they are trying to empty the social stomach to not waste food since the worker is a gonner. I wouldn't worry about it. I have seen it a couple times, but only early on where there are not too many workers yet. Nanitics can be...fragile.