One day, I checked on this queen ant, and found nanitics! This queen is the first that I caught who had wings but raised nanitics. This queen does look slightly odd among her wingless nanitics, but I’m okay with her decision to keep her wings. Some queens will keep their wings, but most drop their wings after landing.
Since I fed this ant honey before I went away for a week, the queen fed her nanitics soon after they had emerged from their pupal stage. This allowed the nanitics to get to work helping the queen sooner than otherwise, increasing their chances of survival slightly.
I actually do not know what species of ant this queen is, so I often refer to her as “The Mysterious queen” but I should be able to identify her soon. She is probably some kind of nylanderia or some other similar genus, but I cannot be certain what she actually is.
In this example of trophallaxis, a nanitic is feeding the queen some honey from her social stomach. Ants actually have two stomachs. There is their personal stomach, which is for themselves, as well as their crop, or social stomach. Their crops serve as an internal lunchbox so that the foragers can feed ants who are unable to leave the nest, such as the queen. Some ants, though, take this to the extreme. Honeypot ants, such as Myrmecosystus mexicanus, have specialized workers called repletes. These repletes start as normal workers but are stuffed with food while their exoskeletons are soft. Once they are fattened up, they become living fridges stuffed with food. During tough times, these repletes feed other members of their colony via trophalaxis so the colony can survive until conditions improve, and the colony goes back to their normal behavior.
