245 replies to this topic

[dspdrew]

Update 3-6-2014
 
Both colonies are still doing well, and are still producing lots of new eggs.

 

The colony living in my new experimental formicarium has been eating a lot of crickets lately and feeding the larvae like crazy. They seem to like to keep the crickets right in the middle of all the larvae, and usually in the left-hand, bottom-most chamber. They have started storing some of their trash in the top left chamber unfortunately, but I'm hoping this will change as the colony grows. They still don't have any repletes ever since the only one they had died during the move. They have been feeding the queen so much humming bird nectar that her whole gaster has turned bright red.

 

The other colony living in the foraging container had their test tube dry out on them, killing a few workers. Because of the way the water evaporated, I didn't even notice it was dry for about a week. I put a new test tube in there, and they are now all moved in. For a while, they all had moved except the repletes and the queen. It looks like the repletes just can't hardly move themselves around, mainly because of being stuck to the bottom by some of the sticky humming bird nectar. Eventually I moved them all myself, but damaged one of the repletes while doing so, and it has since died.

 

I added a webcam on to the colony in the formicarium, which stays lighted and online 24 hours a day. If you would like to check it out, you can see it here (http://antcam.gyg.cc:8081/).

[Crystals]

You should try offering several types of sweets, such as oriole nectar and various fruit juices to see what they go after the most.

 

My ants seem to go after different things when larvae are at different stages, or depending on which is the freshest.

[Anthony]

Ok have that web cam bookmark

[dspdrew]

Update 3-24-2014
 
The colony in the formicarium has not been eating anything I give them lately. They don't seem interested in any dead insects I give them, all they do is run out, spray them with acid, and run back into the nest. In the last week, they have been pulling all the pupae out of their cocoons. A few of them have eclosed, but just today i noticed about 3 pupae laying in their trash pile along with a couple callow workers too. I'm not exactly sure what's going on, or why they're doing this. Right now they have five pupae left--three naked, and two still in cocoons. They have 20 workers, a bunch of smaller larvae, and another new cluster of eggs.

 

The colony in the foraging container hasn't really changed much at all. They have about 15 workers, with quite a few of them being repletes.

[Matt]

Does not the problem come from a too high humidity?

[dspdrew]

Not sure, but it seems like having too high of humidity could be possible considering the conditions where most of these live in the wild.

[dspdrew]

Update 6-1-2014
 

The colony in the test tube and foraging container is still doing well and growing.

 

The colony in the formicarium still has not been doing well at all. Up until yesterday, they had only 10 workers and one larva left. Thankfully, yesterday the queen finally just laid another bunch of eggs.

[dspdrew]

Update 6-12-2014
 

The test tube/foraging container colony is still doing well and growing. Two repletes, the largest, and a medium sized one seem to have fallen over though, and probably aren't going to live.

 

The colony in the formicarium is doing even worse than before. They still have their new batch of eggs, but the one remaining larva seems to have disappeared. They're also down to only 7 workers now. I took them out of the formicarium and moved them back into a plain old test tube without a foraging container. We'll see if they do any better.

[dspdrew]

Update 6-25-2014
 

Disaster! I came home today to find my only healthy colony's test tube completely flooded with everything in there drowned but the queen. It looks like two workers got out in time and were sitting in the foraging container with a couple larvae.

 

[Mathiacus]

Do you know what caused the flood? Sorry to hear about that dude, is two workers enough for your queen to bounce back?

[dspdrew]

No idea what caused it. I hope two workers is enough.

[Gregory2455]

Anything happen since?

[dspdrew]

She just sits there in her test tube with her two workers. Hasn't laid any eggs since.

[Gregory2455]

She is STILL sitting there today? Alive?

[dspdrew]

Yup.

[dspdrew]

Update 7-29-2014
 

The colony that got flooded is gone now. The last two workers and the queen just died.

[Gregory2455]

So you have none of these queens any more? Aren't they flying in a few weeks?

[dspdrew]

No, I have one left, and yes, they should be flying any time now.

[dspdrew]

Update 8-19-2014
 

I caught three more of these queens on 8-3-2014 and 8-5-2014 near Joshua Tree National Park. Two that were alates landed on my black light trap, and one dealate I dug out of a founding chamber two days later. It had rained pretty good earlier in the day on 8-3-2014.

 

Shortly after putting the two that landed on my black light trap in test tubes, one of them removed its wings. A few days later one of the two dealates died, but I'm not sure which one it was.

 

Now both the alate and the dealate are still alive and have nice piles of eggs. If the eggs don't start turning to larvae pretty soon, I'm afraid these might not be fertile.

 

My older remaining colony is down to just two workers now, and no brood.

[dspdrew]

Update 8-26-2014
 

Sadly, my original colony lost its last worker and queen.

 

As for the two new queens, it turns out they are both most likely fertile--the dealate and the alate, as they both have a few small larvae now.