Division in the Ranks

If you think getting a all-night-music playing, defaulted on the rent, garbage hoarding tenant to move out of your house is hard, try getting an ant colony to move out of a filthy, fungus encrusted, dried up old test tube! I have tried applying heat (usually with catastrophic results due to condensation), applying light, and bashing the tube with something metal to make a horrible noise and vibration.  I have also tried the old be really patient and just wait tactic.  That one seems to take months.  What is it about the moldy old test tube that they cling to so vehemently? I guess us humans do that to, always a bit afraid of change, aren't we?

I find the queen can be much more stubborn than her workers when it comes to moving on. This is where the real hierarchy in ant colonies becomes clear. Queens don't actually rule the kingdom, telling their workers what to do.  Instead the whole colony acts as a super-organism. Or does it?

I have been trying to get a colony of Lasius ants to move out of a really disgusting tube that is dangerously contaminated with mold (that I think came from a maggot that they insisted on carrying into the tube). Well, as you will see in the picture below, the three workers have all moved into the new tube, two days ago! The queen is still hanging out in the old tube, snorting up fungal spores. The workers, to anthropomorphize, seem to be staring longingly in the direction of the wayward mother, as if she is just not functional enough to make an intelligent decision about where she should be.