Should I be worried?????

[jumbo992]

hey, haven't been on here in ages.

I have had my ant queen since July the 14th and she hasn't made a egg chamber she has just sat in the test tube she came in with her eggs.I bought a ANT STORE Starter Set - mini farm/arena and place the test tube in the forging area and she didn't explore just sat their so 2 days ago I attached the test tube to one of the entrance holes in the ant farm not the forging area and she is running up and down. Have I done anything wrong or haven't done anything yet.

Thank you for any advice

[shadowsong]

well I'm pretty much a newbie too, but someone
more experienced will prob give some advice soon ^^

what I do is just catch queens and put them in
small 'jars' if you can call it jars

in the jars I usually put sand of course, and one small plant
with roots

I put in the queen and let her get used to it,
then that evening I drop in some water,
simulating a good rain shower

and they are always dug in the next morning

usually with an entrance tunnel at the base of the plant

then I just water the plant on regular basis
and after a month and a half or so I empty the jars on a paper

and usually there are queens with workers and eggs


this is the method I used when I was young and it always
worked,
sadly enough I never was to good in keeping the
colonys alive after that ;D


this year I started again and did it differently,
and only 1 of my 4 'jar colonys' survived until now

so the method I used before might have been a good one
and definitely a better one then what I did now


I dono how the professional guys do it
but maybe you can try something similar,
not in a jar of course ^^

(I'm not even jar is an English word)

[togot]

hey there, I have had a similar experience with some of my queens. they laid eggs, but they didn't even try to dig a nest chamber. I'm not sure why they did this, but it didn't seem to affect the development of the brood any. just try to keep her in the dark since queens are photo phobic. that's my suggestion

[jumbo992]

???Thank you both for your comments .

shes in a ant store mini starter kit and she is kept in my wardrobe so hoping when the brood are hatched they will move just wandering if I had done anything wrong.

[xennon]

Hey Jumbo

I did the exact same thing as you. I stared out with a L niger colony (about 10 workers) and I put their tube into the foraging area of an Antstore starter set.

The workers looked around a bit and ate some food, however they never went near the nest area. So I removed them from the foraging area and attached the tube directly to the unused connector on the nest area, then covered the nest area to make it dark and left the tube in the light.

After one day my workers had started digging and after 2 days they had made a nest and the queen had moved. I detached the tube and the colony is now doing fantastically well :-) So I don;t think you have done anything wrong, just leave the queen in the dark and let her do her thing. If you want to encourage her to dig you could leave it in the light and make sure the sand area is covered so when she digs its dark (make a starter hole too so she can find a dark spot). Make sure the sand is moist (but not soggy) so when the time comes for the workers to dig, they will be able to create a good nest.

[jumbo992]

Thank you for your comment I didn't think I had done anything wrong I didn't get any workers with my queen just queen and brood. Their is a few cocoons so I will wait until they hatch and see what they do and shes just lay ed more eggs.

When the cocoons hatch shall I feed them straight away ?

thank you for the comment

[jumbo992]

I thought I would let you know one of the cocoons hatched today I saw it when I was cleaning the ant farm and its still a light color so must of just hatched ;D

[shadowsong]

woohoo ! gratz ^^

always nice when the first ants hatch,

it's like a special moment

[jumbo992]

yeah it is