She is such a good mother.
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She must find a safe place to nest first and seal herself in... then she will lay eggs.
When you put a queen ant in a test tube she will at first be distressed to be trapped... but then after about a day she forgets how she got there assumes it must be the nest she made and starts laying eggs and raising young ants.
Ants are very smart for small insects... but there are limits.
@futurebird your ant queen cleaning her eggs has me wondering how a colony bootstraps itself -- how much work can/does the queen do before her workers can take over. I assume the queen doesn't typically clean eggs or dig tunnels herself. What about hunting, foraging, or fighting, whatever else an ant does...
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She is such a good mother. I’m still in shock that she was going to try and live under my keyboard.
When I found her she was “hiding” but like most queens she wasn’t aware of how big she is and her gaster was visible giving her away.
She is now in a luxury NYC ant condo.
@futurebird
My gaster is always sticking out, too. -
@futurebird your ant queen cleaning her eggs has me wondering how a colony bootstraps itself -- how much work can/does the queen do before her workers can take over. I assume the queen doesn't typically clean eggs or dig tunnels herself. What about hunting, foraging, or fighting, whatever else an ant does...
In most ants the queen has such a large body, so much in fat reserves that she is able to dig a small nest and raise the first 3 or 4 workers without eating at all. Once they are up and running they do the first foraging. At this stage the queen will still help with cleaning the eggs, but soon she starts to focus on laying eggs only. Another function of the queen in young colonies is as a refrigerator. The foragers bring her food, fill her up. She can hold as much as a honey pot.
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@futurebird your ant queen cleaning her eggs has me wondering how a colony bootstraps itself -- how much work can/does the queen do before her workers can take over. I assume the queen doesn't typically clean eggs or dig tunnels herself. What about hunting, foraging, or fighting, whatever else an ant does...
The very first workers are often very small... they have a special name "nantics" ... they are very shy and seem aware of how precarious their colony is at this stage.
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In most ants the queen has such a large body, so much in fat reserves that she is able to dig a small nest and raise the first 3 or 4 workers without eating at all. Once they are up and running they do the first foraging. At this stage the queen will still help with cleaning the eggs, but soon she starts to focus on laying eggs only. Another function of the queen in young colonies is as a refrigerator. The foragers bring her food, fill her up. She can hold as much as a honey pot.
There are some species of ants where the queen will go out and hunt for food during the early days, but those that lock themselves in are more typical.
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There are some species of ants where the queen will go out and hunt for food during the early days, but those that lock themselves in are more typical.
@futurebird @gooser3000 I love the word "Nanitic" to refer to that first brood of workers a queen raises to do the initial foraging. As I understand it from watching Ants Canada, they are quite a bit smaller and very cute! The only problem is I keep getting it confused with Niantic, the location data company that also makes Pokemon Go.
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@futurebird @gooser3000 I love the word "Nanitic" to refer to that first brood of workers a queen raises to do the initial foraging. As I understand it from watching Ants Canada, they are quite a bit smaller and very cute! The only problem is I keep getting it confused with Niantic, the location data company that also makes Pokemon Go.
@futurebird @gooser3000 even worse, "Niantic" has the word "ant" hidden inside, while Nanitic does not!
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@futurebird @gooser3000 I love the word "Nanitic" to refer to that first brood of workers a queen raises to do the initial foraging. As I understand it from watching Ants Canada, they are quite a bit smaller and very cute! The only problem is I keep getting it confused with Niantic, the location data company that also makes Pokemon Go.
@semitones @futurebird there's a relatively recent genre of "survival" games where you're shipwrecked and have to bootstrap whatever you need to survive (gather some sticks and a rock to make an axe and start chopping down trees to make shelter, etc.). Maybe we'll get an ant queen survival sim someday.
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@semitones @futurebird there's a relatively recent genre of "survival" games where you're shipwrecked and have to bootstrap whatever you need to survive (gather some sticks and a rock to make an axe and start chopping down trees to make shelter, etc.). Maybe we'll get an ant queen survival sim someday.
There are a few good ant colony games, but not one that really captures the tight margins of early colony life.
Do you lay another egg and try to raise one more worker, or hope that the two you have can find more food first?
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@futurebird @jmax @log random ants? Of course not! I think your house is full of very specific ants!
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