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Jadeninja9’s Prenolepis imparis Journal


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#1 Offline Jadeninja9 - Posted February 7 2018 - 9:36 AM

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This is going to be my first journal here on Formiculture. It’ll be of my two Prenolepis queens and their future colony together.

Okay so first off, I caught the the first queen on Feb 1st, at 3:14 pm while exiting my school with one of my friends. Another friend had given me a test tube at lunch so when I saw the queen on the ground I took out my test tube, which already had an aphaenogaster male alate inside of it, and put the queen in there. I wanted to see how they’d react, but they really didn’t mind each other. I thought the queen was Lasius sp. at the time. Literally that night I had a dream that I found a Prenolepis imparis queen because I’d been thinking about them so much. Then the next day, on Feb 2 at 3:48 pm, as I was talking to people in an Instagram ant group chat about how I can never find any Prenolepis imparis queens, I saw a Prenolepis queen mating with a male right beneath my feet as I was approaching my doorstep. I immediately put the queen and male in a test tube. Yesterday I just got confirmation that the two queens are infact Prenolepis imparis.
Here is a picture of the first queen:
9jcSK8a.jpg

And here’s the second queen:
2acWqYY.jpg

Last night before I went to bed, at around 8pm I taped the queens’ test tubes together so they would form a two queen colony. I woke up at 7am this morning and found them huddled up together:
gZdj8NB.jpg

Its cool how these queens still haven’t dropped their wings. It just goes to show that the method of looking to see if a queen has lost her wings will tell you if a queen is fertile or not, is false.

That wraps up the first entry of my journal, and I’ll update it more when something happens.
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#2 Offline VoidElecent - Posted February 7 2018 - 9:50 AM

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Are you sure that's an Aphaenogaster male alate? Did you recently find it or was it from last season?

 

Last year, I established a dual-queen polygynous Prenolepis imparis colony, as well; it was leagues more successful than my single-queen colonies. Good luck!



#3 Offline YsTheAnt - Posted February 7 2018 - 10:11 AM

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Nice dude! Let me know if you want more... I got way to many

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#4 Offline Jadeninja9 - Posted February 7 2018 - 11:20 AM

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Are you sure that's an Aphaenogaster male alate? Did you recently find it or was it from last season?

Last year, I established a dual-queen polygynous Prenolepis imparis colony, as well; it was leagues more successful than my single-queen colonies. Good luck!

I only took 1 non macro picture

Nice dude! Let me know if you want more... I got way to many

Lol thanks but I like finding the queens my selves cause it’s just more fun

#5 Offline Jadeninja9 - Posted February 9 2018 - 6:39 PM

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Are you sure that's an Aphaenogaster male alate? Did you recently find it or was it from last season?

 

Last year, I established a dual-queen polygynous Prenolepis imparis colony, as well; it was leagues more successful than my single-queen colonies. Good luck!

oh it was from Jan 16. Maybe I should make an ID post



#6 Offline YsTheAnt - Posted February 10 2018 - 10:29 AM

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Are you sure that's an Aphaenogaster male alate? Did you recently find it or was it from last season?

Last year, I established a dual-queen polygynous Prenolepis imparis colony, as well; it was leagues more successful than my single-queen colonies. Good luck!

I got a six queen colony!

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#7 Offline Jadeninja9 - Posted February 10 2018 - 4:12 PM

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Are you sure that's an Aphaenogaster male alate? Did you recently find it or was it from last season?

Last year, I established a dual-queen polygynous Prenolepis imparis colony, as well; it was leagues more successful than my single-queen colonies. Good luck!

I got a six queen colony!
Wow lol. I heard when you have more than 2 queens in the colony it’s hard because when you want to move a colony to a new setup, there will be some queens that will refuse to move.

#8 Offline YsTheAnt - Posted February 10 2018 - 9:21 PM

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I'm sure the workers will take care of them, by pulling and stuff. I think that if I make it too inhospitable they will move regardless

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#9 Offline Jadeninja9 - Posted February 10 2018 - 9:37 PM

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I'm sure the workers will take care of them, by pulling and stuff. I think that if I make it too inhospitable they will move regardless

Hopefully



#10 Offline YsTheAnt - Posted February 10 2018 - 9:49 PM

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Lol yeah.

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#11 Offline Ants_Texas - Posted February 10 2018 - 9:58 PM

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I'm sure the workers will take care of them, by pulling and stuff. I think that if I make it too inhospitable they will move regardless

That definitely doesn't work for Pheidole...  :lol:



#12 Offline Jadeninja9 - Posted February 11 2018 - 9:46 AM

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I'm sure the workers will take care of them, by pulling and stuff. I think that if I make it too inhospitable they will move regardless

That definitely doesn't work for Pheidole...  :lol:

 

Lol why not?



#13 Offline Derpy - Posted February 11 2018 - 11:59 AM

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They are extremely stubborn, my old colony of pheidole; however, moved very quickly.

-1x Parasitic Formica Sp. Colony

-1x Pogonomymrex Californicus Colony

-1x Camponotus Hyatti Colony

 


#14 Offline Jadeninja9 - Posted February 11 2018 - 1:27 PM

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They are extremely stubborn, my old colony of pheidole; however, moved very quickly.

Nice. What species of Pheidole was it?



#15 Offline YsTheAnt - Posted February 12 2018 - 7:45 PM

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He doesn't know, I got one for myself as well and the workers escaped and know I have just a lone queen. I'm gonna try pheidole again though. I have done well with formica and novomessor, but not with camponotus and pheidole

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#16 Offline Jadeninja9 - Posted February 12 2018 - 8:00 PM

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He doesn't know, I got one for myself as well and the workers escaped and know I have just a lone queen. I'm gonna try pheidole again though. I have done well with formica and novomessor, but not with camponotus and pheidole

Oh wow

#17 Offline Jadeninja9 - Posted January 12 2019 - 11:36 PM

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P. imparis Colony, Feb 1, 2018 - Jan 9, 2019

Timeline:


February 1st, 2018: I caught a Prenolepis imparis queen at my school. The next day I found another one at my front doorstep. 

February 7th: The two queens merged

juXWf79.jpg
TKOWGI0.jpg

March 26th: I found the cotton in their tube completely molded over with one queen dead. I moved the living queen into a clean tube and put her a wine cooler, hoping that would trigger her to finally shed her wings. The next day she did so. She ended up spending the whole summer and the beginning of Fall in the wine cooler due to my mom locking it and losing the key, which might have contributed to the colony's eventual downfall.

May 5th: I found her first eggs.

May 27th: I counted about a dozen eggs.

October 5th: I was finally able to remove the tube from the freezer and found the queen with a worker and brood. The tube was moldy so I moved them to a new one.

October 23rd: I found all the brood gone except one pupa and egg.

November 15th: The colony had its second worker. I found that the egg had disappeared. They must have eaten all the brood for some reason.

I decided not to overwinter them as I've read that wild colonies nest deep enough so that they maintain warmth throughout the winter.

January 1st, 2019: I moved the colony to a new test tube due to their previous tube being severely moldy. 
0AIC5o5.jpg

January 8th: The colony had a severe mold outbreak with the queen and one worker succumbing to the mold. I put the colony in the freezer to kill the last worker. 
FVi5wj0.jpg

R.I.P.


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#18 Offline Will230145 - Posted January 13 2019 - 7:22 AM

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That is terrible I really enjoyed this journal as I really want some!

#19 Offline Jadeninja9 - Posted January 13 2019 - 10:00 AM

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That is terrible I really enjoyed this journal as I really want some!


They’re kinda slow

#20 Offline Rstheant - Posted January 29 2019 - 2:53 PM

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:boohoo:
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