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[FloridaAnts]

So, I was thinking I could raise D, bureni queens who I watched mate to nanitics. Boy, was I dumb. I raised 4 out of 10 successfully, despite them all have mated(I watched and waited for male to come off). So, it took a couple months and they got workers, and then, a worker died as soon as the second hatched. Now, they are also producing males(but also workers) which is really weird for a species like this. I have heard of it, I just thought they would wait until a dozen workers or so to do it. I feed mine fish food for time issues, and they never run out of water. Any tips? This is kind of frustrating, I will admit, especially when queens get pupae and decide to die.

Edited by FloridaAnts, August 19 2022 - 6:17 PM.

[AntsDakota]

So, I was thinking I could raise D, bureni queens who I watched mate to nanitics. Boy, was I dumb. I raised 4 out of 10 successfully, despite them all have mated(I watched and waited for male to come off). So, it took a couple months and they got workers, and then, a worker died as soon as the second hatched. Now, they are also producing males(but also workers) which is really weird for a species like this. I have heard of it, I just thought they would wait until a dozen workers or so to do it. I feed mine fish food for time issues, and they never run out of water. Any tips? This is kind of frustrating, I will admit, especially when queens get pupae and decide to die.

The majority of queens never survive in the wild anyways, mated or not. The 6 queens that died probably had bad genetics, like most queens. It's perfectly natural, I wouldn't be worried about that part. As for the males part, queens that do this can do it whenever they want, it doesn't have to be at a certain generation. They were likely trophic eggs that got raised to adulthood by accident instead of being fed to the worker larvae. But other than that, heat and lots of food are basically all Dorymyrmex need to thrive. You couldn't help that the other queens died, that was just nature taking its course. The other four, however, should do just fine.