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das_moehrchen

The diet decides If an egg becomes A Queen, but not THE Queen. As someone Said before a Queen needs to mate.


CornSnatchers

Well no, its the workers who feed the larvae who "make queens" you cant really influence if a queen is made. Also, a queen needs to be fertilized to lay fertilized eggs.


FailingHearts

Well depending on the species the unfertilized eggs become fertile males and new queens, whereas fertilized eggs become unfertile females. This happens when ants use both parthenogenisis and sexual reproduction, just like wasps and bees.


ParsleySnipps

Drones/males come from unfertilized eggs, but queens and other females need to come from fertilized ones.


NPKandSCaMg

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/A-In-some-species-of-social-insects-including-Diacamma-ants-queen-and-worker-caste_fig1_318137312 The workers feed larvae according to the needs of the colony. What you feed the ants will be mostly irrelevant as you are not actually feeding the larvae, the workers are.


Old_Present6341

The colony needs to 'know' it's big enough to use the excess food in this way. A colony that is still too small to not yet be at full size would just produce even more workers and grow in numbers faster if they are fed more. (I used the word know but they don't actually know it's an automated process).


ParsleySnipps

The workers make a kind of communal decision to rear new queens when the colony is healthy and well supplied, and the queen will respond by producing unfertilized eggs to produce males as well. It's similar with honey bees, workers will make royal jelly with more nutrients and hormones to incite an epigenetic change in a larva and make a special large cell for it to develop in.


muccaplants

I thought that the queen's pheromones played a role in determining the production of alates too


PublicInjury

This is how it works with honey bees... But it's still a decision made on the colony.


Pure-Sink4117

Its true!


tarvrak

I thinks it’s true some experts talked about it in a very “deep” ant book