372 replies to this topic

[Antking117]

It shall be worth the wait, I remember the spider incident xD ! I see that huge major!

[Serafine]

So today, this is a feature of all my ant colonies. You can expect additional journals if these colonies survive the winter (maybe even earlier). 

First of all, Lazy Tube.
They are about 200 workers now and growing quickly.




Central chamber (main brood hub, most of the young larvae are stored here).


Left wing with the more-or-less-oval office (seems to be the queen's favorite spot).


Right wing (main pupating chamber is located here).


A major getting fed. Don't wanna get bitten by that one.

 
The water tube is really busy. If they keep piling that many ants in there I'll consider adding a second one to the vacant port.

 
While this isn't the most ants I've ever seen outside it is definitely the most I managed to catch on a picture.

 
What I find interesting when looking at the way they approach the foraging area is that they do not seem to have a clear pathway to the food (which always is in the same place).
There are two main paths that are used most frequently (one along the edges of the glass tank and another one through an open area in front of the nest) but a lot of ants sort of stray from this path and use diagonal shortcuts and the way they move around obstacles is also pretty random. I wonder if they just navigate by memory as most of them don't really seem to follow a pheromone trail (not even in the dark).

 
Looks like some workers wanted to build a roadblock at the entrance but then were too lazy or couldn't be bothered anymore so there's only a few pebbles in front of the tunnel now.





This is the Lasius niger queen you've already seen a few times. She finally got nanitics (something around half a dozen, they're so tiny) and they just received their first meal, a fruit fly. The workers don't like light and get very freaked out, luckily the queen doesn't really bother and stays calm.
I have never actually seen them outside but they carried sand into the tube and stuck it to a pupa (left of the fruit fly). I assume they found the feeder with the Sunburst as well, so I filled it up.




Hadn't really checked on my Solenopsis fugax queen and her 2 workers for quite some time. The queen took forever to get her first workers (think she laid her first eggs in June), when took a quick look a few days ago I thought they had eaten their brood because there was none to be found. They also got a fruit fly today.

 
Turned out they had not eaten their brood. Instead they raised a couple more workers which then dug into the cotton to get a more moist space for the brood. They're supposed to grow pretty fast but this queens seems to have a some issues getting her colony rolling, although I think she's got it now.

Edited by Serafine, August 25 2017 - 7:56 AM.

[Antking117]

Very cool, they grew so fast!

[Serafine]

How to make a lazy tube go really active?
Just offer them some food they like.
 
 
August 27th
They got some spiders and were quite excited. They just love spiders.





 
Here you can see two sporty ants, each one carrying a small spider towards the nest.

 
I also found the first fruit they ever considered worthy of at least a few bites - a tiny strawberry that grew on the lawn (it's actually more of a meadow) around the house.





August 30th
Today, they got two goldflies, a few spiders and some unknown bettle. Wow, I have never seen them so active and excited.
 
Here's an extra sporty ant doing some parcour exercises (because why go around the rock when you can go over it?).

 
First fly in the nest (well, it took them about half an hour to get there, so it wasn't exactly fast).

 
I'm not really sure what they're doing here. Teamwork isn't exactly their strenght, usually it's just one ant that grabs the prey and drags it into the nest - that is, if she doesn't loose interest half way down and drops it until another ant come around to pick up where the last one left. It's like the ant version of a relay race.



 
 

 
A look into the nest tells us that they have a ton of pupae and a good amount of big larvae but less smaller larvae. I wonder when they are going into hibernation - in Spain it's still summer and around 30°C (20°C at night) but the brood takes around 4-6 weeks to go from egg to worker, so I expect them to stop rearing new brood in about 2-4 weeks.




There's a lot of eggs or tiny larvae in the water tube but I'm no sure how much of them will still turn into workers this year.



Here you can see some workers munching on a fly. These flies were very popular, in fact so popular that I now ordered a cup of goldflies (they come as pupae but quickly hatch so I'll have adult flies). I really enjoyed seeing them so active and excited, hopefully they will like the ones I ordered, too.

Edited by Serafine, August 31 2017 - 12:21 PM.

[Antking117]

Very cool, often when feeding my tetramorium I tend to have 3 ants on each fruit fly and they are trying to drag it back to the nest, but are all pulling in different ways after it is already dead.

[Serafine]

Very cool, often when feeding my tetramorium I tend to have 3 ants on each fruit fly and they are trying to drag it back to the nest, but are all pulling in different ways after it is already dead.

Fruit flies fortunately can be picked up by a single Lazy Tube worker and they are really fast at collecting them. Yesterday I scattered about a dozen fruit flies throughout the outworld and it took them only a few minutes to collect them all. One of the workers also dragged a tiny cricket into the nest, the other crickets were probably too big and thus processed in the outworld.

I noticed that often the first workers outside do not immediately grab food items but attack (and "kill") them, then wander around them in circles probably laying down pheromone marks to guide the following-up workers to the food.

 

The colony also shows a clear day-night cycle - every day at around 9-10pm they come out in larger numbers (12-15 ants) for about 2-4 hours (depending on how much and what type of food there is). Then activity goes down to only a few workers outside until morning dawns.

Oh, and one of the big-headed medias now seems to be a permanent part of the foraging group (no majors out yet).

 

 

Found their trash pile, hidden well under one of the decorative items. It is still rather small but they seem to throw out increasing amounts of garbage which I consider a good thing.

 

 

 

Over the last 3 days there was an odd worker, seemingly reshaping the entrance of the outworld water tube day and night. Yesterday I found a dead worker in the outworld, so I assume it was this one as Camponotus have this tendency of walking away from the colony when they're about to die. Today I also noticed 2-3 workers in the outworld - not sure whether they are now foraging during day or if this is the first generation of workers slowly dying off (there's still 3 of the nanitics alive, the two other casualties were minors).

 

 

 

I gave up on counting the ants (200+ is all I can say) but tried to get a remotely accurate number on the pupae and larvae, there are an estimate of around 70-80 pupae and 20-30 larger larvae (including those in the water tube).

No idea about the number of eggs and tiny larvae in that massive blob tended by the workers clinging to the side of that wall near the top end of nest. Also not sure if they gonna raise any of these before next year.

 

Notice the amount of eggs in that upper horizontal corridor, the massive major in the chamber to the left and the giant lonely pupa in the corridor to the right.

 

A picture from the other side showing all the brood that was obscured by the walls on the previous images.

 

 

 

 

Also status updates on the Lasius niger...

 

...and the Solenopsis fugax.

[Antking117]

JESUS! That is a major! HUGE! Can not wait for a militia of them! Those solenopsis are tiny!

[Hikari]

Good to see the Lazy Horde doing so well! Also really interesting how the Solonopsis queen is so much more darkly colored than her workers.

[Serafine]

This is actually true for most if not all subterrain species with pale yellow workers.

Lasius flavus has this color disparity as well:

Even the queens of most termite species are much darker than their pale workers.

 

I'd guess that this is a protection against ultraviolet light and other harmful radiation that could damage the DNA of the eggs and sperms within the males and females while they're doing their nuptial flights.

Edited by Serafine, September 7 2017 - 2:13 AM.

[Hikari]

That makes sense. I'm so used to the ants around here pretty much just being around the same color as the queen, lol. Might be why I hope to successfully raise a Lasius umbratus queen someday. I love the yellow-colored workers, but yeah, the queens are much darker.

[Serafine]

My old camera basically died so pictures will now be a bit different. This cam has a much higher sensitivity in the dark but also a much weaker flash which means more shadows, but also much more realistic colors.

 

After a few days of little activity I already though they were starting to wrap things up but no, not yet.

However there is in fact a notable decline in foraging, most of the days it doesn't look that crowded. Sugar water is still very popular but protein food not so much.

 

As you can see there's lots and lots of pupae (most pupae on the left side are obscured by the wall but they're about as many as on the left side) but only a few larvae. I guess this trend will continue so that soon there will be little brood left, except the packs of tiny larvae carried by some workers.

 

 

This camera is so sensitive that if there's a lot of dust on the glass it will focus on the dust instead of the ants. If you look closely you can see some cotton-like stuff on that white pupae, remnants from the silk strains the larva used to weave it's cocoon.

 

In this picture the larvae seem to be a bit fuzzy. I haven't seen this before, maybe due to the angle and the lighting or just the general image quality, so I'm not sure if this has always been there or is actually a winter adaption. I've seen pictures of hibernating Camponotus herculeanus larvae that looked almost as if they had fur so this might very well be a feature only present in larvae developing during the cold period of the year.

 

The garbage pile in the waste chamber is growing but so far nothing seems to mold.

 

Sometimes there's a lot of ants in the water tube, sometimes it's completely empty.

 

They now have guard posts whenever it is kinda shady.

 

 

 

 

Lasius update (need to start separate journal). They're developing slowly but steady and seem to be very undemanding, only eating like a fruit fly every few days.

 

 

Solenopsis fugax update (need to start separate journal, too). These tiny girl are becoming ferocious eaters, taking every fruit fly I give them and they went totally crazy over a tiny bee larva.

 

Not surprising though as they have a ton of brood to feed (the new cam is awesome for tiny ants like these).

[lucas3431]

Solenopsis fugax...wait these are in Ireland??? I guess I never seen them due to their size. Apparently nuptial flights happen in September here, I'm gonna need my magnifying glass.

[Serafine]

They live underground where they mostly feed off the brood of other ant species, you'll barely ever see them above ground.

However I am pretty sure that you have already seen their nuptial flights (it's hard to not see them, they form massive clouds) but just mistaken them for mosquito swarms.

It looks pretty much like this:

[lucas3431]

They live underground where they mostly feed off the brood of other ant species, you'll barely ever see them above ground.

However I am pretty sure that you have already seen their nuptial flights (it's hard to not see them, they form massive clouds) but just mistaken them for mosquito swarms.

It looks pretty much like this:

Thanks for the tips, I know a good area to look out for flights, I just need some warm weather.

[Serafine]

Quick update because that's why:

 

(The last picture was actually 10 days old.)

[Raptorofwar]

I love Lazy Tube! They're amazing.

[Serafine]

Update time!

 

A large part of pupae hatched during the large week resulting in less pupae and more ants. They are slowly starting to fill the nest.

 

 

This picture has several interesting details. There's two groups of majors on each side of the nest (the one on the left side is more obvious but there's one next to the right port as well) and I'm not sure what is that conglomeration of workers on the middle of the nest - it could be a chewing community eating some spider. And then there's several larvae scattered around the middle and upper part of their nest - looks like they are raising another batch this year.

 

 

The major group next to the right port. The polymorphism in this species is really insane.

 

 

A closeup of the upper and middle corridors with most of the eggs.

 

 

 

These are the largest majors they have raised so far - they're almost as big as the queen. Also there's another small group of larvae and a worker with even more eggs.

 

 

Usually I sort of neglect the water tube when it comes to taking pictures but this time there were so many ants and brood in there I had to include it.

 

 

The trash pile is under observation but seems to be fine so far.

 

 

Two workers exchanging food.

 

 

Last but not least the foraging party. They just got some tasty spiders and immediately all went for the best one. A leg is already off and before long one worker will no doubt drag it into the nest (if anything is left by then).

 

 

 

Oh, I almost forgot, they got a new outworld expansion. It's just a plastic container that may be replaced with something proper sooner or later. For decoration purposes I put in some scratch-built tabletop sentinel towers to create a sort of eerie environment. Hopefully they'll use it as a waste dump but as far as I can say no ant has ventured there yet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Lasius niger (no name yet) are also slowly starting to take off. Plus I'm slowly learning how to properly use this camera - that's by far the best picture I got of them so far.

 

 

The Amber Family is doing well, too. Queen Wednesday (I actually found her on a Wednesday) just laid another large batch of eggs and a lot of the larvae are beginning to pupate. They're devouring everything I give them - they just got two fruit flies and already pulled one of them to the entrance. For such small they have a surprisingly high food intake.

 

[JackPearl]

Awesome journal, love the lazy horde! By the way, how long have you had them for?

[Serafine]

12th November 2016, a few days before the first picture. They came with 4 workers alive and one dead, so the colony queen was probably gathered around June or July which means the colony is a bit over a year old (maybe 14-15 months).

[JackPearl]

12th November 2016, a few days before the first picture. They came with 4 workers alive and one dead, so the colony queen was probably gathered around June or July which means the colony is a bit over a year old (maybe 14-15 months).

Awesome! They sure seem to be growing well for a colony so young!