odd ant behavior

Subject:

Comments:
: A few minutes ago i was near my garage when i noticed a few dozen winged ants in my dogs water dish. They appeared to be wood ant, or red ant (formica) as it appeared in my insect guide... : anyhow, on the walls, a bucnh of what appeared to be smaller wood ants had gathered in a number of groups, each surrounding a single winged male, which was much larger...looking like it was a different species...I know that they were red ant males, but the ants surrounding them were not..they were much smaller. There was one much larger group around a wingless queen...I have never seen a new queen nor old queen of any species except for Carpentar ants, so i dont know what it was. It looked about right for the smaller ants though. The piles of ants were not harming the winged ants, but seemed that they were slowly moving them towards their nest entrance. I scooped up the queen and her group and found that the queen had only 3 limbs... : i hope some of that made some sense :) : what it looked like to me was that the smaller ants had captured newly mated queens and males and were bringing them to their nest...as slaves perhaps. I couldnt see any practical use for the males except for food, but perhaps they wanted the queen as a slave for her offspring.. : i live in the sierra nevada mountains of California.. : just wondering if anyone has any idea what this might be...if my writing made any sense in the first place =0

Optional Link URL:
Link Title:
Optional Image URL: