Hello, my name is Johnny, I'm "starting" on formiculture, and I think I may have started a little bit too strong this summer.....
Last year I started with a Solenopsis queen, all good until I got about 20 workers... seems like I left the cotton a little bit too loose after feeding them cuz, the next morning there was not a soul in the test tube.... So I decided not to let it happen again, bought a 50 test tube pack locally and got everything ready, moved my office ( I work from home) to my basement (not an actual basement but sort of, with good ventilation and a nice view of the mountains), bought a UV lamp and last May I started turning it on with a LED saver light at the same time, long history short... I filled out the 50 tubes in about 1 month, so, I gave away the repeat ones, and kept one or 2 colonies from the uniques I got, so far I have 4 camponotus queens with eggs, 1 solenopsis queen with eggs, 3 black crematogaster queens with eggs, 3 colobopsis (these are the ones I'm most excited about) with eggs, 3 yellow crematogaster queens (these are the second ones I'm most excited about) and a bunch of queens with no eggs that I will not mention....
I'll post pictures for all egged queens on sunday when I check on them.