The craziness of ant queen collecting

My wife sent me a text after lunch saying she had found me a really big ant queen on her lunch break, and put it in one of her lunch containers to bring home.  This was incredibly surprising to me, because it is hot and dry today, and hasn't rained in a long time.  Ant nuptial flights seem to occur a day or two after a big rain, so I wouldn't have expected any flights today at all.  From her description it sounded like a Camponotus, which I didn't expect to find in the city ever.  Excited beyond belief that I might be able to find some more, I raced out of the house, sans shoes, and sure enough 10 feet from my door, there was a queen.  Not wanting to miss the window of opportunity I continued to walk around and around my house in a wide semi-circle looking for more.  I can only imagine how insane I must look to my neighbors, who already don't speak to me.  Walking back and forth, up and down the same chunk of side walk, no shoes on, occasionally getting on all fours and chasing something around that they can't see from their vantage point, with a pill bottle.  Then shoving the pill bottle in my pocket and repeating.  Not as bad as the days I bike very slowly through the park on my way home from work, where all my neighbors stroll with their well behaved dogs and children, and then suddenly throw my bike down on the ground and insanely try to find the containers in my backpack, interrupt the flow of pathway traffic, again looking for something tiny on the sidewalk that others can't even see.  More than once I have been asked if I am alright, and when I look up and grinning at them and say "I am fine, I am just collecting ant queens", I am pretty sure they conclude that I am not alright at all!

It was killing me that I couldn't walk further afield, but you see, I am expecting a shipment of spiders today from Montreal, and the delivery man hasn't shown up yet.  I did manage to find three ant queens, and with the one my wife found, that makes four.  Unfortunately they were incredibly hard to convince into the containers, and I might have injured one of them in the process.  They are such incredibly beautiful queens!  Check out the size comparison below between one of my newly collected Camponotus queens (top) and a Tapinoma queen from last summer.

Size comparison Camponotus (top), Tapinoma (bottom).