I felt the need to share an important aspect of my ant-keeping experience with those who are new to ant keeping. More particularly, the facet of colony growth. I just want to encourage new ant keepers that when you don't see a colony developing like you think it should, you need to remember that some individual queens seem to be better built for a life in captivity than others, even within a species. For time reasons, I try to care for all of my colonies in the same way. But even when I have 10 queens of a single species, ultimately 1 or 2 will do just phenomenal, and 1 or 2 will do quite poorly by comparison. Now, it's possible that there's something I could change to cater to the ones that are doing poorly, but that's not the point of this message. The point of this message is to highlight that if you captured only one queen of a particular species and it's not doing well, then you don't know if it's a problem with your care, or it's a problem with the queen. So, when there's a nuptial flight, try to get your hands on 10 or so queens so that you can compare them. Good luck!
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