Hi. So I started ant keeping in early July 2018. I went out and was able to catch a Lasius Niger queen on my first go out! Unfortunately I put her in a new, small plastic container and I think the fumes from the plastic killed her. By the end of the day she was curled up and wasn't moving. So I decided to give her back to nature for some other creatures.
After that I bought a Lasius Niger queen online from a seller here in the UK. She arrived on the 17th July. I've been throwing around the name Jo for her. From the Japanese 女王 (Joou) meaning Queen (I'm learning Japanese and going on holiday there in March, so it seemed appropriate).
I noticed she didn't have much water in her tube, so I researched ways to get her more water. I ended up preparing an other test tube with water, taping the two together and covering the new one with a small cardboard tube. It took a while (about a week and a half) but she eventually moved!
I noticed that no eggs had hatched at all, and saw online that if she's cold it can slow down development. Since I live in a fairly cool country (Scotland) I bought a low powered heating mat to try and keep her warm. After a few days I checked on her and saw that her eggs had finally hatched in to larva!!
In anticipation of her workers coming I bought them a small formicarium similar to this one from the same company, but the nest in flat and extends outward from the outworld (it's no longer sold, so I can't get a picture of it from them).
A few days ago I checked up on her again and saw what I thought may be small cocoons, but I wasn't sure. I decided to get to work getting the formicarium ready. So I set it up with some soil and connected her test tube up with some rubber tubing in to the test tube with a modified test tube stopper. After a few hours, she started exploring the tubing! She poked her head out in to the outworld and started collecting soil!
She eventually partly blocked off the exit of the tubing in to the outworld and brought some in to the test tube.
And that bring us to today Sunday 19th August. Just over a month since I got her, I removed the tube covering the test tube and saw this!
Her first nanitic! I hadn't checked on her in a few days so I don't know for sure when she arrived, my guess is around Saturday. I think I checked on Friday night and didn't notice anything. The wee thing was carrying larva from one spot to another (only millimetres away from where she picked it up from) but once she saw the light she started scurrying around the test tube! I put a little bit of honey on a small piece of paper in the outworld, I hadn't seen the worker go that far, but just in case. I came back later to check on them and spotted possible trophallaxis as well! I tried to get a picture but this is the best I could get.
You can kind of see the workers head near the the Queen's. I tried to move in to a better spot for a photo but they stopped seconds after this picture was taken.
Having a look at the other brood, it looks like there may be another 2 cocoons ready to hatch in the next few days! I will post an update as soon as I notice any new members of the colony. If the images are too big, let me know and I'll either scale down the future ones even further or just post the links to each instead of the actual images.
