372 replies to this topic

[Serafine]

These pictures were originally not intended for release (I just wanted to see how the ants are doing), so they're not as good as usual.

However I decided to post them anyway because, well, just look at them. I have no idea where all these ants are coming from.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They eat a lot more right now, they chew through about 5-6 bee pupae per day.

Looks like there are some new eggs as well.

Edited by Serafine, November 16 2017 - 12:38 AM.

[Dreamer]

Thanks for doing this journal Serafine, it's really encouraged me in my journals, especially to take photos - yours are great.

[Serafine]

To add or not to add, that is the question...

 

 

The new nest is prepared, the heating cable mounted, the water tube attached.

I don't think they fill out the nest yet but I feel they are reaching the nest's limits in terms of brood storage.

Also having more room might actually encourage them to grow - currently pupating seems a bit stalled and I'm not sure if this comes from hibernation on the horizon or simply a perceived lack of nesting space.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Serafine, November 22 2017 - 12:02 PM.

[Serafine]

Oh well, me stupid has just removed the pink cover foil I accidentally left on top of the glass all the time  and also added the second nest - the ants didn't like any of that. They brought all the brood (except those in the water tube) to the central part of the nest.

They have discovered that there is new space beyond the port but haven't really explored it in like the last 20 minutes. Only one worker was in so far and it only wandered as deep as maybe two centimeters. They put some majors in front of the port though (inside the old nest).

 

Edited by Serafine, November 22 2017 - 2:45 PM.

[Serafine]

They're now kinda active even during the day (activity at night is much greater though).

I made them a feeder full of diluted maple syrup but they don't seem interested however they do eat a lot of fish food (red mosquito larvae).

 

One of the "mobile fuel stations" about to feed the guards at the entrance.

 

The passage to the nest, usually there's one or two majors in there. When I mounted the screw to finally fix the tubing to the port two majors and a dozend smaller ants erupted from the entrance (they quickly calmed down though).

 

They are starting to take over the new nest but only the upper part. The queen still remains mostly at the center of the old nest but there's a lof majors in the new one.

 

New nest.

 

Old nest.

 

Old nest, lower part.

 

Old nest, main brood hub.

 

The garbage pile still looks kinda okay.

 

New nest, top middle chamber.

 

Old nest, top middle chamber.

 

New nest, water tube. Not much going on yet, but they're actually using it.

 

Old nest, water tube. Lots of eggs and small larvae in there, also a few pupae that look close to eclosing.

Edited by Serafine, November 27 2017 - 7:09 AM.

[Serafine]

Usually I'd wait another 2 to 5 days for an update but there's actually stuff happening.

 

 

They've brought a lot of brood into the new nest and there's a lot of pupating going on. In fact I think there's almost as many pupae in the new nest as in the old one.

 

The old nest however has some really huge cocoons.

 

 

The lower part of the new nest still isn't very popular.

 

Unlike in the old nest.

 

 

The new water tube is barely used for brood storage although sometimes there are about a dozen workers in it.

 

Less brood in the old water tube, looks like a large part got moved out to warmer places.

Edited by Serafine, December 1 2017 - 9:16 AM.

[FeedTheAnts]

Do you hibernate? Sorry, I don't know what you do in Germany.

[Serafine]

UPDATE! =)
 

Do you hibernate? Sorry, I don't know what you do in Germany.

These ants are from Spain so they don't really hibernate that much. I'm just gonna plug out the heating cable after the next big pupating wave is over.


I tried to up their food diversity a bit. Since they won't even look at fruit with their gasters meat was the way to go.
The burger beef was appreciated (which is kinda interesting cause the ingredients list said black pepper) although they mostly just licked it. The chicken they didn't really care about too much. I still have some pure meat cat food to try.
They also started to drag the food out of the feeding dish and scatter it across the outworld a few weeks ago but now they seem to actually drag stuff into the nest. Some parts from the last bee brood supply just vanished never to be seen again.


There's a huge pupating wave happening right now. Also they took over the second nest and except for the lower part it almost looks like the old nest already.




New nest:


Old nest:


The trash pile is looking... doubious. There seems to be some kind of wetness to it but I have idea how it got there unless the ants are watering it on purpose.
In the picture above you can see from the color of the bottom substrate that there is moisture spreading through the lower right part of the nest.
It also seems as if they started to carve out the bottom substrate in some spots and are throwing it onto the trash pile (I can recognize some of the shrimp pebbles from the feeding dish in the outworld as well).


Brood and eggs in the old water tube as usual, nothing worth a picture in the new tube (there's like 3 ants in it).

Edited by Serafine, December 5 2017 - 3:57 PM.

[Serafine]

My ants are meat ants! They love minced meat (even when it's dried out they still chew on it).

 

 

 

The colony is fairly active and they eats a surprising amount of food considering they have so many pupae. The pupating is going ahead nicely, lots of pupae are starting to turn brownish which means they're gonna hatch soon (next 1-2 weeks).

 

Overview: New nest/ old nest.

 

 

Upper part: New nest/ old nest.

 

 

Lower part: New nest/ old nest. There's new pupa hull bits on the waste dump, a sign that the first workers of the current pupating wave have eclosed.

 

 

Water tube: Old nest (nothing to see in the new nest). There's not much brood left in there but you'll see lots of tiny larvae scattered all over the nest on the pictures above.

 

 

 

 

And now for some nice close-ups...

 

Huge batch of tiny larvae right in the center of this picture.

 

The center of that pupae pile almost reaches the ceiling.

 

Same here, before I disturbed them the pupae where nicely piled on top of each other like barrels in a storage facility.

 

One of the big-headed majors (not the bigst one though).

 

Another major near the pupating chamber.

 

A major cleaning itself.

Edited by Serafine, December 10 2017 - 11:25 PM.

[Serafine]

The food trials continue and I landed a real hit with cat food (pure meat, no plant crap like Cassia gum in it). They even chew on it after it became dry.

 

Yesterday evening:

 

This morning:

 

This evening:

 

Nest overview

 

 

Upper part, old nest/new nest.

 

 

 

Lower part, old nest/new nest.

 

 

 

Here's the perspective from the other side. Those brood piles are HUGE.

 

 

 

The water tube of the old nest, with a major looking nicely into the camera.

 

 

A close-up of the brood pile.

[MegaMyrmex]

The ants don't seem to favor the hydration chambers. Is there a certain reason for this? Would only a few water test tubes in a nest work? Nice colony, by the way!

[Serafine]

The ants don't seem to favor the hydration chambers. Is there a certain reason for this?

Yes, they are at the opposite side of where the heating cable is. Also I only water them a tiny bit every few days (and when I do and there's ants inside they usually move out).
Sometimes a few of those botton chambers are completely full of ants (usually during the early evening hours) but most of the time they're rather empty.
 

Would only a few water test tubes in a nest work? Nice colony, by the way!

If you mean like a nest that consists of a plastic box containing multiple test tubes, yes that would totally work (it's recommended to glue the tubes into place with hot glue so they don't roll around).
Thanks =)

Edited by Serafine, December 16 2017 - 3:00 PM.

[Serafine]

After noticing that they piled up garbage behind the water tube I drove the ants out of the outworld (which was kinda easy, I just hat to remove the towel to let daylight in which made all but a few brave workers hurried back into the nest) and properly cleaned the whole tank.

Look how much trash they stuck below the decorations and the water tube.




This is probably why they're called sugar ants.



They got some grashoppers which are currently the hot stuff of the season (they completely ignored them when I first gave them some about two months ago).
Here's a first one - two majors out at the same time...


...which got immediately topped by three majors out at the same time.


They also got some bacon cubes which were completely ignored (probably too salty).


They really loved the grashoppers and managed to drag them all over the place.


Added a second water tube cause the first one may run dry soon. There's already a worker in it.


This was their "Antmas Eve Dinner", including half a roach which proved very popular. It seems like the key to getting this colony satisifed is food diversity.


They quickly swarmed all over it.


Lots going on at the entrance are as well - starting to look like you'd expect the entrance of a 500+ ant colony to look like.





And here's the usual nest pictures.




New nest/old nest.





















More eggs in the new nest, the next wave of brood is underway.







Oh, and if anyone was wondering how the Amber Family (the Solenopsis fugax thief ants) are doing, I'd say they're doing well...

Edited by Serafine, December 25 2017 - 2:58 PM.

[Serafine]

Using the pictures from the 24th I made a COUNT.
 
This is the nest. I gave every recognizable ant a blue dot, then divided the nest into small sectors and counted the ants in those sectors by giving them purple dot.
 



These two outworld pictures were taking quickly after another so there shouldn't be too much fluctiation. The amount of ants in the water tube (8) is an educated guess based on experience. In the end I counted 79 ants and rounded them up to 80 (as seen in the first picture).
 

 



This brings us to the final number of

visible ants.
 
 
Note that this count isn't their EXACT population - sometimes I had to make hard guesses when there were overlapping ants and obviously it does not include ants that were not visible, like ants hanging vertically on the backside of nest walls, ants in the connector between the two nests, ants in the water tube conenctor and the quite massive number of ants in the tubing from the nest to the outworld.
 
Those invisible ants included I would estimate them to a number of about 750-800 ants in total.

And just as a reminder... they were 4 workers in March.

Edited by Serafine, December 28 2017 - 2:58 PM.

[Serafine]

Forgot to count 30 ants, edited above post...

 

 

And while we're at it here's some more pictures!

MEAT!

 

 

They love it!






I'm not sure what exactly is going on but I have a suspicion... you remember that odd stuff in my Sunburst bottle? I still don't know what it actually is but it got more (it also grows inside the feeders when they stand around for a week) - the ants don't seem to be affected by it so it's nothing bad but it might be some sort of bacteria eating away the sugar from the mixture... well, ever since I started to mix sugar water (1:2) with about 25% Sunburst (instead of pure Sunburst) the outworld acitivity of the colony has exploded...

 

Edited by Serafine, December 28 2017 - 3:53 PM.

[Serafine]

This is how it looks now every evening, lots of ants sitting at the entrance and a good number are foraging as well.

 

They love baby roaches, unfortunately I ran out of them and you can't order the tiny ones.

 

Bee brood is still popular, the problem is they drag them all over the place

 

 

 

 

Feeding time!

 

A few hours later...

 

 

 

For some reason they're now drinking the diluted maple syrup after they ignored it for over 2 weeks.

 

This seems to be a permanent satellite base now, there's always lots of workers in it.

 

I just cleaned the outworld, this is all trash from last week!

 

 

 

 

Nest pictures!

Lots of new ants have eclosed and there's significantly less pupae than a week ago. The remaining ones are mostly of brownish-golden color and should eclose soon as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Serafine, January 6 2018 - 7:08 PM.

[MegaMyrmex]

That's an mazing colony, when will they produce alates?

[Serafine]

Probably some time next year, Camponotus alates usually spend the winter in the nest and fly in spring so I guess they will be produced in late summer/fall.

[Dreamer]

And just as a reminder... they were 4 workers in March.

 

I've got one colony with 2 workers and one with 4... 2018 is going to be a fun year Thanks so much for all your hard work on this journal this last year, it really helps me to know what to expect in the future

Edited by Dreamer, January 8 2018 - 4:20 PM.

[Serafine]

I wouldn't guarantee that yours are growing as crazy as this colony did since every colony is different but from what I've heard Camponotus barbaricus seems to be a fast-growing Camponotus species in general. It's gonna be interesting to see how the three colonies grow and behave in comparison to each other
 
Feeding time again!


This worker was actually trying to feed the dead one.


Yes, the picture way too bright but that major looks really cute.


Grasshoppers are still hot.


I just watered the nest before taking pictures os there's a lot of condensation but you can see on the right side and the middle of the picture that they now carry food into the nest and eat it there.


There's young brood across the entire center line of the nest, the most obviously concentrated in the middle chamber.


They started to seal the second water source with cotton


like they did with the first one.


This is from today evening, they are preparing for the night foraging.

Edited by Serafine, January 10 2018 - 3:55 PM.