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Tetramorium immigrans:Brood boost in founding Experiment


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#1 Offline VenomousBeast - Posted July 10 2019 - 5:24 AM

VenomousBeast

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Ok, so I obtained a Tetramorium queen during one of their nuptial flights and I decided I'd conduct a small experiment with her. A bit of background, I don't normally keep the "basic" ants, I tend to only keep them for experiments or if another species needs their brood, workers, etc. I tend to keep cryptic ants and more experienced species, for example, Stigmatomma pallipes and Trachymyrmex sept. Anyway, back to my experiment, so, I decided to brood boost her with almost eclosed pupa from a wild colony to see how that would impact her egg laying when she starts (this is before she layed any eggs). The workers eclosed and the queen started egglaying. I was surprised by the sheer amount of eggs she produced! I added maybe 20 brood boosted pupa and now I'm at over 100 workers strong in 4-5 weeks since I got her. Not only that, but I've got probably another 200 coming before next week! I decided to share this to any new ant keepers who want a larger colony faster in a few short weeks. I'm going to do updates on this colony as they continue to grow. Also, I've never seen anyone brood boost Tetramoriums in their founding stage so I thought this would be something cool to add. 


Edited by VenomousBeast, July 10 2019 - 5:25 AM.

Keeps:

1:Pogonomymex occidentalis

4: Tetramorium immigrans

2 Reticulitermes flavipes


#2 Offline TennesseeAnts - Posted July 10 2019 - 5:42 AM

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I did this with a 2 queen colony back in 2017. I had about 5 boosted workers, and they were heated, so 3 weeks from then and I had well over 80 workers and lots of brood.




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