I have some little black ants in my motorhome. I’m pretty sure I picked them up at my last stop in upstate New York but I’ve since driven far away from there. Wikipedia says little black ants nest in the soil so presumably I didn’t take their queen with me.
What’s going to happen to this group that hitched a ride? Are they likely to elect a new queen and go looking for a good nesting spot, or curl up and die, or what?
They’ll probably just die. They can’t “elect” a new queen. I think there’s a few species where a normal worker can change into one, but normally they have to be specifically hatched that way. Or I’m the case of honey bees fed special food as a larva.
It’s also possible once you get them back outside they can find another group of the same species and join them. This would provide them with a new queen to serve.