The Formica Subaenescens breeding season starts in early April. Millions of flying "Alate" ants take off and mate in the air. Pregnant queen ants then land and find a place to start a colony. On the 10th, I captured one of these searching queens on a sidewalk near Juniper Hill Elementary. I am keeping her temporarily in a petri dish, with some moist wood for moisture. Fingers crossed, she will be the start to an epic pet ant colony.
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Once queens have found or dug a nest, they will not eat until the first worker ants develop, during this time, she will move and breath as little as possible, to not waste energy. My queen ant keeps herself near the wood at all times, so that drinking uses as little energy as possible. I will do an update when she lays her first egg.
On the 15th, I had my friend Miguel over. I was about to show the queen ant to him, and then got a surge of satisfaction when i noticed 4 little, pill shaped ant eggs. These will hopefully develop into the first team of worker ants in the colony.
I had actually at first assumed my queen was a Black Carpenter Ant, but a more knowledgeable person on inaturalist.org corrected me, as this was actually in the Formica Fusca complex, and more specifically, Formica Subaenescens.
Just goes to show you how similar two very distantly related species can look. This exited me though, as Formica ant colonies grow much faster than carpenter ant colonies, and are more hardy.
This species are also polygynous ants meaning that if the queen ant dies, The colony will choose a new queen, meaning that the colony could hypothetically live forever.
The link to the discussion is Here if anyone wants to add on or has any questions.
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