The tetramorium queens I caught a couple of weeks ago both have egg piles! Interestingly, both of them have their egg piles on the top part of the tube... I wonder if it's a temperature thing?
Anyways back to ignoring them for another couple of weeks.
The Lasius lady, her brood pile is growing well and I think I saw a cocoon! All appears well with this lady, she will need a new tube before hibernation though.
Lastly the P. imparis queens I caught this spring! They appear to be doing well, all 8 of them still alive, and lookie that their first workers!! Now to see how long they remain polygynous. It turns out that P. imparis, while polygynous in the founding stage, the further north in their range you go, the less they are likely to have multi queen colonies? At very least, last year my two that were successful in reaching the colony stage, all but one queen ended up dead after the workers showed up (likely the workers killing the lesser productive of the queens).
Last update is a bit of a sad one.
So one of my P. imparis colonies from last year had a massive crash this summer, I don't know why or how. Usually the go to is something I fed them, but I fed them the exact same stuff as all my other colonies and they're all fine. All that is left of a once thriving colony is the queen and one worker.
I really doubt they will make it but nonetheless I'll still try and give them what they need. It'll be a good sign if she lays eggs again.
I also made sure to sanitize the hell out of the tools I used to get her and the worker out in case there was a disease or something transmittable.
