Over the past few months I have become more and more concerned for my 11-year-old Lasius umbratus queen. I had not seen her all year, and I had noticed that the number of workers and brood within the nest has dropped dramatically. It didn’t really surprise me as, on average, these queens live 10-15 years, […]

As readers of my journals may know, I have a 4-year-old Lasius niger colony (the “Magenta Colony”) which I have raised from a single queen ant captured during the mating flights of 2015. As is normal with new Lasius niger colonies, the growth was slow for the first year, picked up in the second, and