Flying ants

Lord Vetinari

This is what happened when I found a queen of the black ant lasius niger on my car and carefully manoevered a male drone ant near her.
I'm fairly sure they have pheromone identifiers that prevent members from closely related colonies breeding together. AFAIK each ant nest only releases one sex at a time - the ants near my back door were only releasing males.

Brian V.

Queen black ant Lasius niger





Hmm- nice rear end



Time for first kiss



Hmm let me think about this



The drone then patiently explained that he didn't think they were compatable and walked off

canon400d

Lord Vetinari wrote:

This is what happened when I found a queen of the black ant lasius niger on my car and carefully manoevered a male drone ant near her.
I'm fairly sure they have pheromone identifiers that prevent members from closely related colonies breeding together. AFAIK each ant nest only releases one sex at a time - the ants near my back door were only releasing males.

Brian V.

Queen black ant Lasius niger


Hmm- nice rear end

Time for first kiss

Hmm let me think about this

The drone then patiently explained that he didn't think they were compatable and walked off

Excellent series Brian. Well done.
Regards
Bob

Paul Iddon

That's very intertesting, and great photos to boot too Brian.



Paul.

cmorganphotography

Next week on The Bug and the Beautiful, will the drone discover it's long lost brother only to lose him again in a tragic food gathering accident and an unexpected case of amnesia????? Stay tuned...

Lord Vetinari

Thanks for the comments all

CMP- think I could have trouble with that story line

Brian V.

Skippy

Lord Vetinari wrote:

This is what happened when I found a queen of the black ant lasius niger on my car and carefully manoevered a male drone ant near her.
I'm fairly sure they have pheromone identifiers that prevent members from closely related colonies breeding together. AFAIK each ant nest only releases one sex at a time - the ants near my back door were only releasing males.

Brian V.

Queen black ant Lasius niger
Hmm- nice rear end
Time for first kiss
Hmm let me think about this
The drone then patiently explained that he didn't think they were compatable and walked off

This is very educational Brian, would have been quite interesting to watch in real life.

She's quite a nice speciemen... the female.

Great series Brian, I was thinking your images would end with the male getting killed, but that didn't happen.

Thanks for sharing ... Skippy
.

cmorganphotography

Lord Vetinari wrote:

Thanks for the comments all

CMP- think I could have trouble with that story line

Brian V.

I don't see why. Soap operas lie about the future all the time or change a plot midstream, that's what makes them so horrible, or great, if you're into soap operas. And there's witches and vampires and time warps and ghosts, and weird medical cases and dying of heartbreak and many many many weddings and divorces and he said she said mysterious disappearances and torture chambers.

All you need a few pics of some drones sort of conglomerated nearby each other and you have soap opera for ants gold!

GOLDENORFE

great shots Brian, im with maxine,thought there was death involved!
phil
http://www.flickr.com/photos/goldenorfe/

Lord Vetinari

Thanks again for the comments

Skippy/Phil. The female was amazingly placid whilst this was going on, just moving her head a bit every now and then. She stayed in the same place for another 5 mins before toddling off.

Brian v.

tlee

Skippy wrote:

This is very educational Brian, would have been quite interesting to watch in real life.

She's quite a nice speciemen... the female.

Great series Brian, I was thinking your images would end with the male getting killed, but that didn't happen.

Thanks for sharing ... Skippy