372 replies to this topic

[Serafine]

So today there will be no nest views but you'll get some special pictures anyway.
 
 
Two days ago I started upping their fruit fly load and suddenly there were about 15-20 ants running around in the arena quickly dragging all of the fruit flies into the nest. They took so many that I had to add a second batch and even then they took most of them for an estimated intake of 30-40 fruit flies. They also got a green bottle fly (I ordered a box of larvae and this was the first one that had hatched, just on that day) which was quickly dismembered and dragged into the nest as well.

Inside the nest there's small larvae popping up everywhere - they're not done yet.

 

 

The bee pupa was also unusually popular with twice the regular amount of ants drinking from it.

 

 

And look who dared to enter the outworld for the first time! (She didn't go out much further than that though)

 

 

The next two pictures were taken during the afternoon. Isn't it cute how that worker guarding the entrance turned towards the camera?

 

 

 

And here are some really special pictures - all dead Lazy Tube workers, really close up. You can count the hairs on those.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Lasius got more nanitics and more cocoons. They are extremely inactive (unless they're put into the light) and barely eat anything yet they are still developing at a steady pace.

 

 

 

Queen Wednesday laid even more eggs and more larvae are starting to pupate. Her workers quickly eat through every fruit fly the can get and don't show any signs of slowing down for hibernation - but then there is currently a huge Solenopsis fugax nuptial flight happening outside so I guess it's normal for them to still be active.

Edited by Serafine, September 21 2017 - 12:18 PM.

[Serafine]

Brood!

 

Brood!!

 

BROOD!

 

BROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!!

 

Oddly a lot of it is in the lower parts of the nest. Probably a humidity thing.

 

 

 

I wonder if they will expand that pile to the other chamber when the first one is full...

 

They are really thirsty.

 

 

 

 

 

And now for even more BROOD! Did you guess the subject of this post yet?

 

The Amber Family is soon going to explode in size, there's so many larvae and pupae. It's kinda impressive that this brood pile has been fed by only about a dozen workers.

Edited by Serafine, September 23 2017 - 9:39 AM.

[Hikari]

Gratz! Lots of brood!

[Serafine]

I noticed that lately a lot of posts have just been pictures of ants and brood, so here's something different.

 

How the Lazy Horde manages foraging.

 

 

 

 

Step 5 would be "drag it into the nest" but that only works when there's no other workers around that drag into different directions. As mentioned in earlier posts teamwork isn't their greatest strength, at least not when it comes to moving stuff around (maybe that'll change in the future though).

 

 

Five of them dismembering a fly. They usually cut off the legs before they drag it away - there's so many fly legs in my outworld now

 

Something I noticed is that there's a distinct difference in behavior between the castes. While the minors usually ignore me or run away and the majors have been incredibly shy so far, the medias are different. They are curious and bold and will come to inspect what's going on - one even tried to attack my pincers. It's gonna be interesting to work around in the outworld when there's more of them.

 

 

Now for the more "regular" stuff again, although this time a lot has changed.

 

As you can immediately see most of the pupae are gone and there's a ton of ants now. In fact there's so many ants I consider adding the second nest.

They definitely gonna need it when the current brood - which is scattered all over the entire nest - turns into workers.

 

 

There's a lot of pictures of specific nest areas following so I made a map for better orientation.

 

1) Basically all pupae in the left wing are gone and small larvae took their place. The top left chamber almost empty.

 

2) The remaining pupae are almost entirely stored in the right wing and the top chamber, together with larvae of all development stages.

 

3) The top central chamber now contains only a few pupae and the huge batches of eggs and very small just-hatched larvae  (actually most of them are tiny larvae as can be seen by them curling or having black dots). There's also always at least two majors in that chamber.

 

4) A close-up of the upper left chamber.

 

5) The upper central corridor with lots of small larvae and Queen Barbarianna.

 

6) The left port area. There's only a few larvae there so hopefully adding the second nest here won't be too much of a hassle.

 

7) The right port area. This port leads to the outworld so it's not unexpected that there's no brood.

 

8) More brood in the central hallway.

 

9) A surprisingly large amount of brood in the lower left corridor just above the hydration mesh.

 

10) There's even brood on the hydration mesh now. I think they're really running out of space.

 

11) They did indeed expand the trash pile to the other chamber.

 

12) Even more brood in the water pipe.

 

 

Image from the other direction.

 

 

 

 

Queen Wednesday has lots and lots of pupae now. Not many workers have yet eclosed yet though.

 

 

The Lasius niger colony has just tripled in size. You can clearly spot the light brown fresh workers.

Edited by Serafine, September 26 2017 - 3:05 PM.

[Serafine]

So... it's been a a while.

 

 

As you probably know I've expanded their setup with some tubing and a plastic container. It worked as planed and the ants are in fact disposing their dead there.

 

After a while I've also added a small feeder to the plastic container and for some ominous reason this feeder has proven to be very popular - in fact it is even more popular than the more nearby feeder in the main outworld. You'd think ants always visit the closest food source - well, they don't.

 

Here's a worker returning home with her belly full of sweet sugar water. You an really see how transparent that gaster looks.

 

 

 

The pupae pile is growing again as the first batch of larvae has already pupated.

 

 

 

The left wing once again is full with larvae of all sizes and fresh white pupae.

 

The upper left chamber still is almost empty but the chamber right below it is full of brood.

 

The main pupating chamber, you can really see the difference between the fresh white and the older more yellow-brownish pupae.

 

 

Next to no brood at the right door area, just a bunch of majors.

 

Lots of brood in the middle corridor.

 

 

This area in the lower left corridor seems to be an establish breeding site now.

 

TONS of brood in the water tube.

 

That thrash pile seems to be... smaller. I think I should check the outworld they probably stuck their trash all under the decorations again. Also note how they're starting to sit at the walls.

 

 

 

 

Fifty shades of amber.

 

They've actually expanded to the bottom of the tube.

 

These Solenopsis fugax are so ridiculously tiny it's really hard to take pictures of them outside their tube and even harder to spot them with the naked eye - they're basically invisible.

 

 

 

 

 

Fresh Lasius workers! You can still see some of the being a bit pale. Look how they insulated their water reservoir. They are also not using the straw as intended but instead have made a shortcut through the cotton at the side of the tube.

 

Edited by Serafine, October 7 2017 - 1:58 AM.

[Serafine]

Actually I didn't plan on making an update today but well...

 

 

Outside activity has been very low although today there were actually about 9 ants outside for a brief duration. Some workers have died over the course of the last week, the total count is now at 11 including the first dead media worker. Three of the nanitics are still alive.

 

 

They shoved most of the larvae into the central corridor. Fatties everywhere.

 

The central corridor with most of the fatties.

 

That pupae pile has grown a lot.

 

Looks like a all the small larvae are in one of the bottom left chambers now.

 

A breeding chamber next to the waste dump. Not my first choice but well... ant logic I guess.

 

Lots of fatties in the water tube. And her majesty is taking a nip (yes, that big ant is the queen).

 

 

 

More callows! Look at that cute white worker! They are so fast and skittish, when they get a name it has to be something that reflects their nervous behavior and their raw speed.

 

 

 

 

More amber. These shouldn't take much longer to eclose.

 

They actually expanded to the bottom of the tube. Some of the workers look fairly pale, I think they just eclosed very recently.

[Serafine]

Actually I wanted to make this update a bit earlier but my internet just completely screwed up...


Lazy Tube got a new toy! It doesn't really fit in color-wise but you can't have everything I guess. It will help to increase the outworld's effective surface area a bit though which had a notable lack of vertical objects to climb on.


There were two ants on it after a few minutes - one liked the maple syrup, the other one took some of the aphids away (there was an aphid invasion at our door, dozens of aphids climbing up the wall, probably winged females which drifted down from the hillside, a few of them even still had wings). I also caught two small spiders which were carried into the nest literally the moment they were encountered.




Here's some nest pictures. There's not really anything special to say about them other than that they got even more pupae and larvae. The queen's gaster is thin though so I'm not expecting anymore eggs for the next weeks (maybe even months, because hibernation and stuff).
















Here are what I call the guardians of the water tube. During certain times of the day there's always a small group of ants sitting in the outworld's water tube. Not exactly sure what they're doing, I guess most of them are older workers that spend most of their time outside the nest. They rarely ever have big gasters.




The Lasius are doing fine, too. They quickly grab every fruit fly I add to their outworld and are producing an increasing amount of brood.




And lastly the ants that just gave me a serious headache. Yesterday night I made a last check on my colonies and saw something tiny walking around just outside the container. It was so tiny I could barely see it and it crawled around the shelf in a typical search pattern. Of course I instantly assumed it was a member of the Amber Family, the Solenopsis fugax, Germany's tiniest ant.
This meant that our ways would have to part due to them being uncontainable which was a shame because they just really started going through the roof in terms of brood development.


Just look how many larvae and pupae they have! It took them such a long time to finally get on track.




So at the next day I checked the shelf again, and once more noticed something moving. I quickly took the camera because it's macro is actually better than my eyes and shot a picture of it (this is actually the central 10% of that picture). To my relief it turned out to be a booklouse (or as we in Germany say to the versions that like it dry a dustlouse, neither of them are actually lice though) - which meant the Amber Family can stay with me for some longer.


Definitely different (this picture is a macro shot through a 4x magnification glass, the worker is licking sugar water from the byFormica feeder which once more shows how ridiculously small these ants are).




This last picture shows a size comparison of some Camponotus workers and the first dead Lasius niger nanitic. There isn't a dead Solenopsis fugax yet (at least not one I have found, they're basically invisible - it would probably be about as big as the Lasius' thorax segment), if I find one I'll make another picture.

Edited by Serafine, October 16 2017 - 5:58 PM.

[Serafine]

Update time!

 

I have updated the starter post, it now contains a proper care sheet for this species if someone want to raise them, too. Food item list got updated as well. Be sure to check it out.

 

 

 

So, Lazy Tube has been surprisingly active over the last days, often there were 6+ ants working on the feeding dish with the bee pupae plus others dragging flies to nest and searching for more food (it's a bit hard to get them on a picture though, as soon as the red cam searchlight goes on half of them start to running for cover) and sometimes up to 20 ants outside at the same time.

Their food intake has dramatically increased - yesterday they ate 1 small spider, 4 green bottle flies and 2 bee pupae and the day before they chew through 1 bee pupa, 3 meat fly pupae and a few aphids. There even were a supermajor and a major outside doing tandem running to the sugar feeder (unfortunately I only spotted them when they were almost back inside the nest and didn't have my cam at hand).

 

 

 

Major guarding the nest entrance.

 

 

Inside the nest there's lots of fat larvae but surprisingly the pupae pile has stayed mostly the same size (with some fluctuation over the last days), currently larvae pupating and ants eclosing seem to balance out each other. It's really hard to tell how much brood they have because it's all over the place with tiny larvae in almost every corner of the nest (mostly in the top pupating chamber, the middle hallway and the water tube though).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Amber Family also does great, they have moved almost completely from their cotton pocket down to the bottom of the tube, got several new workers and lots of pupae. They too got offered a meat fly pupae and it looks like they like it. It's still kinda hard to make pictures of them outside the tube cause you know they're so tiny and stuff, also the red sand was a really bad choice for them. Theoretically they should go into hibernation soon but they don't show any signs of slowing down yet.

 

 

 

 

 

You won't read any more news about the Lasius niger here because, well, they're getting their own journal. Lasius niger is a really cool ant species - they are incredibly resilient, active, fast growing, aggressive, recruit very effectively and utterly dominate areas they managed to establish themselves in, wiping out other ant colonies that happen to end up inside their territory with great efficiency. A lot of people think they're boring because they are so abundant and thus ordinary, but they are not. If they were boring they wouldn't be one of the most successful and dominating ant species in central Europe.

 

Link to their journal: http://www.formicult...es-lasius-niger

Edited by Serafine, October 22 2017 - 6:35 AM.

[Serafine]

Look who I caught on picture when I woke up last morning!

She was NOT amused about the lights going on (in fact she looked surprisingly grumpy for an ant).

 

 

 

They are breeding and they are breeding a lot.

 

It's kinda rare to see the queen in this chamber, usually she resides in the mid or upper part of the nest.

 

 

After the first picture taken she usually moves into the outworld connector or the water tube (that's why I now make the water tube pictures first, even though they're always at the end of the picture list, that way I disturb her only once instead of twice). Here she's just moving out.

 

 

This is one of the breeding hotspots.

 

The upper right corner starts to look pretty crowded.

 

Still room on the left port side

 

This is the majority of the larvae, except those in the upmost chambers and the bottom chamber next to the garbage dump.

 

Still room on the right port side but it's unlikely that they place brood so close to the entrance.

 

The bottom breeding chamber and the garbage dump.

 

Still lots of room on the bottom left side (this is where I add the water for hydration so it's probably the most moist part of the nest).

 

For some reason they brought pupae into the water tube (they've done this before but only occasionally).

 

 

Close-up of the top breeding chamber. It not just pupae there, in fact it's wild mixture of brood of all stages (except eggs).

 

 

 

 

 

An Amber Family member collecting sand to pile up at the entrance.

 

The completely moved out of their cotton pocket.

 

Looks like the queen stopped laying eggs - I'm going to wait for most of the pupae to hatch and will then put them into hibernation. The brood seems to develop quite slowly for such small ants, my Lasius niger beat them by far in that regard.

Edited by Serafine, October 28 2017 - 4:21 AM.

[Serafine]

Halloween special!

Find the pumpkin ant! (revelation at the end of the post)



So I checked on the Amber Family (had to refill their feeder and give them some food) and to my surprise they were quite active outside.




About half a dozen workers fed from meat fly pupae and a small spider (the ones on the spider are hard to see).






They also seem to have majors, sort of (if you can call them that, they're barely 3mm after all).


The pupae seem to go nicely, most of them already look like ants.






And here's the ominous pumpkin ant. It's quite well hidden, isn't it?

(Actually there's even a second ant inside the pupa at the inner end of the crack but most of it's body is obscured by the pupa shell)

Edited by Serafine, October 29 2017 - 4:48 PM.

[VoidElecent]

I find it bold you used orange sand for an orange species . I used black sand for my Pheidole tysoni, and they stand out nicely.

[Serafine]

Well... when I realized it might not be the smartest idea it was far too late already

[Connectimyrmex]

Glad to see your ants are doing well. I recently caught a 30 or so worker colony of C. pennsylvanicus, and I'm very tempted to name it energy tube or something (they act like they eat caffeine pills for breakfast)

[Serafine]

Glad to see your ants are doing well. I recently caught a 30 or so worker colony of C. pennsylvanicus, and I'm very tempted to name it energy tube or something (they act like they eat caffeine pills for breakfast)

 

Call them the Caf-Pows!

 

Edited by Serafine, October 29 2017 - 5:15 PM.

[MegaMyrmex]

Wow now that's an impressive colony. Same fokr my tetramorium queen, she won't stop producing even though she needs to hibernatr...maybe try lowering the temperature or raising it a bit to get all the brood to mature before hibernation.

[Connectimyrmex]

 

Glad to see your ants are doing well. I recently caught a 30 or so worker colony of C. pennsylvanicus, and I'm very tempted to name it energy tube or something (they act like they eat caffeine pills for breakfast)

 

Call them the Caf-Pows!

 

 

YEEEESSS

[Serafine]

Wow now that's an impressive colony. Same fokr my tetramorium queen, she won't stop producing even though she needs to hibernatr...maybe try lowering the temperature or raising it a bit to get all the brood to mature before hibernation.

They have a heating cable at the top end of the nest. Also they're mediterranean ants which means they will probably only hibernate from the end of November to about early March.

YEEEESSS

Glad you like the name =)

Edited by Serafine, October 30 2017 - 2:59 PM.

[Serafine]

Lazy Tube is... still lazy.

 

 

Their food intake isn't low but it's not spectacular either. They eat about two bee pupae every two days and some green bottle flies. The fruit flies were just ignored.

 

Guard buddies!

 

 

There are some pupae in the nest but not as much as I had expected. They seem to be a bit on the slow side lately, maybe it's time to hibernate them soon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Connectimyrmex]

Do you keep bees? (I can't think of a way to get so much bee pupae) If so, I wish that I could keep them. They seem awesome, but the large colonies and barbed stingers don't fare well with me.

 

Glad your colony is doing well. I'm not sure about how my C. pennsylvanicus.. colony is doing. They're two days into hibernation but the median worker still goes out and runs in circles.

 

Your colony's major is so cute! I love that she guards with one of the minors.

Edited by Connectimyrmex, November 5 2017 - 6:06 AM.

[Serafine]

Do you keep bees?

Nah, a friend does. He just gave me a plate of brood he had to cut anyway, that's in my freezer now.

They're two days into hibernation but the median worker still goes out and runs in circles.

Yep, mine always do that before they die, at least those that forage.

Your colony's major is so cute! I love that she guards with one of the minors.

Yeh, unfortunately she died last week. There was another major outside but she only took a short walk before she ran back into the nest and hasn't come out ever since.



I cracked up the bee larvae while they were still frozen to share them with the Lasius niger (they can' eat a complete one) and the Camponotus seemed to like it, so this week I broke them all up.




Something is happening - there's new pupae (the white ones are fresh).
Also they are looking less fat than they used to so I'm gonna increase their food load to see if anything changes.
























This one is from the other side.


That brood blob in the water tube...