u/little-yellow-ant

I caught a Polyergus rufescens queen which I want to experiment founding a colony with. I know they're a parasitic species and fully rely on their host workers, I've watched their impressive raids!

I went and dug up a small part of a Formica rufibarbis colony and got a little brood from them:

• 4 pupae
• bunch of larvae
• 4 young workers
• 4 workers

I want to try and introduce the queen to the brood and young workers, however I'm not entirely sure how to. I'll chill them in the fridge for a little while so the young workers are slowed down for the queen introduction. I'll put the workers in a small outworld and connect the queen's testtube to it. Other than that I have no ideas or clue on how to proceed...does anyone have any insights?

I'm currently doing my bachelor thesis with a research group focused on ants, so I get to see how they go about keeping and experimenting with the ants and colonies.

Within the ant keeping hobby the focus is obviously more on aesthetics, with these beautiful (designer) nests and outworlds...just like how I keep my own ants back at home. Feeding them the perfect diets, keeping them nice and clean and just generally getting the colonies to bloom and having the pleasure of being able to watch them nicely in their setups.

Within the research facility the focus is obviously on practicality and efficiency...the colonies are well kept but let's say there is a lot of duck-tape, old broken-ish containers, random ass tubing and old ugly notes written with marker involved lol. There is paint markers, toothpicks, bottle caps, ya know alllll the good stuff! I do appreciate the fact that it shows that ant keeping doesn't need to be expensive at all! Lots of things you can get in normal shops and from hardware stores. (not me taking notes of the stuff they use so I can go grab it myself when back home lol)

I am in ant heaven though, alllllll people who like talking about ants or at the very least social insects :)