I was cleaning the backyard before the fourth here in New Jersey and came across a very small worker carrying brood between some concrete. I've given up looking for queens around my neighborhood because of no luck after a few rain storms, so wasn't expecting to find any new ants and not really thinking about dealing with more than one colony. But I couldn't pass up this opportunity to look for more brood and possibly a queen but know how difficult smaller ants are to keep. I followed this one worker carrying a pupa, then saw a small hole in soil between the cracks with several more workers and brood. I hurried to set up test tubes and grab some tools to attempt to dig out anything. I found over two dozen workers, some brood, and three queens in a very small hole. After scooping them into a small food container and vacuuming up a few more with my usb keyboard vacuum to use on such occasions, I was able to set a test tube in the container lined with fluon that held them in. Overnight, they moved into the test tube, it was two queens with brood and workers. The third queen I put in her own test tube setup, she ran out after I captured most of the others in the container so I kept her separate.
After observing them and looking up possible identification, I think they're probably the odorous house ant, Tapinoma sessile? I didn't want to smash and smell one quite yet. I've seen these workers out back a lot but didn't want to try small ants at first, but seeing brood and queens makes me want to try. From reading other posts about them, they seem a bit difficult to manage because they grow quickly and are prone to escaping but I'm curious to try keeping them for a bit. I was thinking about small soil nests connected with vinyl tubing since I read that these ants are nomadic and constantly moving. These ants were probably budding off from an established colony or already part of such a colony and moving satellite nests. Also, I thought that since they were polygynous that keeping two queens together would be fine. Nope, they killed the one queen who seem subordinate because she was always further from the brood than the other queen or at least I can't see her. They've dug a cavity into the cotton of their setup and I can't quite see who chills out in there. I had fed them but don't know if it was enough or if they were just initially stressed. I do just see one queen by the brood in the the tube that I had put two queens in though.
I tried to place a ruler behind the test tube, but using my phone's macro lens attachment is a pain. The test tube distortion is not helping either. Workers are just over 3mm or so, queen is under 5mm.
