On April twelfth, I was on a seemingly normal walk around the block with mom, when I snagged an orange insect in midair. After placing it in a snap cap vial, I quickly identified it as a winter ant queen. shortly after, more of them began to come down from their mating flight. I only had three containers, but since this species is polygynous, I can safely keep several queens in each. At one point, I was holding a snap cap shut with one hand since I didn’t quite have time to put the lid on, and I snagged another queen with the other hand!
Before long, I had nine queens, roughly three per container. About five minutes later, I found a tenth queen who was just three inches from being killed and eaten by a group of Formica sp. workers. Thankfully for her, I scooped her up in the nick of time. Later on, I found one more queen, but since my containers were stuffed, I simply carried her home in my hands. After I got home, I combined them all into one large group to minimize the number of test tubes needed to house them. Since this species will happily accept at least seven or more queens per colony, it was safe to combine them. A couple of days ago, these queens began to lay their first eggs, and now a brood pile is beginning to form.
