11 replies to this topic

[drawpositive]

Asking for a friend who does not have a profile on this site:

 

His Tetramorium immigrans queen apparently killed [or it looked this way to him] all of the workers (under 20), ate the brood, and is now wandering the outworld. 

 

He provides the ants with water, sugar water, and dead fish as a protein source.

 

They were hibernated successfully this past winter and were awoken a few weeks ago.

He lives in Pennsylvania.

 

Any idea why a queen would behave this way?  Has anyone else witnessed this phenomenon?

 

(I tried searching the forums for this issue, but was unsure what terms to use; I found many ant keeping journals but no tags on "queen killing" "eating brood" etc.)

 

Thank you in advance to anyone who responds.

[TacticalHandleGaming]

Likely due to bad protein source. My tetras love fruit flies, fish food flakes, crickets, poppy and dandelion seeds. Although I've not heard of a queen eating all her workers before. 

Edited by TacticalHandleGaming, April 15 2022 - 3:49 PM.

[azzaaazzzz00]

Yea, its the worker part that confuses me, does he have pictures? That might help.

[ANTdrew]

Likely due to bad protein source. My tetras love fruit flies, fish food flakes, crickets, poopy and dandelion seeds. Although I've not heard of a queen eating all her workers before.

Poopy?

[AntBoi3030]

 

Likely due to bad protein source. My tetras love fruit flies, fish food flakes, crickets, poopy and dandelion seeds. Although I've not heard of a queen eating all her workers before.

Poopy?

 

I don't know about you THG, but I've never fed mine poopy seeds.

[TacticalHandleGaming]

Sometimes I forget to proofread my posts.

[lazyant]

I don't have an answer Cuz I'm dumb but the title is cursed.... 

[bmb1bee]

Eating the brood and roaming the outworld sounds believable, but I don't think a queen of any species would be able to kill her workers. Vice versa would sound a bit more believable though, because if a queen DID decide to somehow attack her workers, wouldn't they just fight back? 1 queen probably can't take out 20 workers all by herself in my opinion... They probably died from one of the reasons listed above, like something in the fish (pathogens, I guess).

[OiledOlives]

Most likely that they forgot to hydrate the nest and all the workers died. I've noticed this in my colonies before. He probably thinks that the queen killed the workers but it's more likely that she was just eating their corpses.

[futurebird]

insect protein is the best food for most ants. 

using chicken or fish etc never seems to work as well. 

[azzaaazzzz00]

Yea agreed, I would only feed colonies that kind of food every once in a while because the ants wouldn't be feeding off of that on a daily basis in the wild.

[Mettcollsuss]

My best guess is that something happened that killed off the workers, then either because of that same thing (whatever it was) or because of losing her workers, the queen ate the brood out of stress.