I recently bought a starter kit for Messor barbarus to try my hand at antkeeping. Started with a colony of about 35 workers + queen, at the moment they live in a test tube connected to a small outworld for feeding.

But about every 2-3 days I find one dead ant when cleaning the outworld. The queen seems to be doing well though, there's brood and she seems relatively calm when I check every week. They're kept at about 20-22°C, they're in a room with AC, they have a seed suply, get a few fruit flies every week, have sugar water and honey on a cotton pad and have a supply of water in the test tube.

I've started giving them some fruit 2 days ago, but found one dead again today. I'm down to about 20 ants now. I bought everything at Ant's kingdom, event the sand for the outworld if this matters. Is this normal or does someone have an idea of what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks

check the fruit for pesticides or maybe a generation is dying i don't know but when this happened to m pogonomyrmex colony the queen died

Edited by Antkeeper01, June 10 2021 - 4:21 AM.

Problem is this started well before the fruit, in my opinion the workers seem to more active since giving it.

It seems though it's only the smallest workers who are dying, so it could be a generation?

Edit: I did take the fruit away a few hours ago just to be sure

Edited by JJade, June 10 2021 - 4:28 AM.

Problem is this started well before the fruit, in my opinion the workers seem to more active since giving it.

It seems though it's only the smallest workers who are dying, so it could be a generation?

 

Edit: I did take the fruit away a few hours ago just to be sure

it is very possible because they are probably just getting old, if ou ae worried you could collect brood from a messor nest near you

Thank you, I'll just wait and see what they'll do, the queen seems ok, so I'm not too worried

Yea, so If the queen looks healthy, than your mostly fine. It's probably their just dying of age and like Antkeeper01 said, you can brood boost, too.

22 Celcius seems a bit cold for Messor barbarus, they're from Mediterrean so they might need higher temperatures, 20 Celcius is actually the farther range of their recommended hibernation range ( 15 to 20 celcius ), you should probably get it to at the very least 24 Celcius.