31 replies to this topic

[Fatatoille]

introduction

 

So to begin, I decided to start an ant journal to document my experiences keeping my messor barbarus colony to be able to look back on these experiences for my own benefit and give insight on what its like to care for a messor barbarus for ant keepers who may be interested in keeping these species.

 

As many people are aware, messor barbarus is a species of harvester ant in the genus messor, endemic to parts of southern Europe and parts of northern Africa. they are polymorphic and range from 3-14mm with queens ranging from 15-18mm. They are slow, docile ants that are prone to panicking easily, especially in the young stages of the colony. Their diet primarily consists of seeds and insect protein that is relatively easy to source. They have a slow and steady initial growth over the first few months but quickly pick up pace once surpassing ~50 workers where it is then possible for a mature colony to reach multiple ten thousands at colony maturity. It is for these reasons that messor barbarus are so popular to keep here in Europe.

 

To give a brief prognosis on how i came to acquire my colony  I have been interested in antkeeping for three years now and have been having a prolonged interest in messor barbarus since first encountering a large wild colony whilst on holiday in portugal, since then I have been looking into keeping messor barbarus and thanks to the 2020 lock downs I finally have enough spare time to execute a plan developed for keeping a colony of these beauties.

 

This colony has been in my care for about 4 months now and there has been quite substantial development since they were first acquired as I have put off making this journal for a while now, I need to give a big update on the start of the colony, which i will make later today. 

 

Edited by Fatatoille, August 14 2021 - 1:07 PM.

[Fatatoille]

Update No.1 - 29/07/2020 

 

After many hours of fiddling to try and get some pics on here I've finally managed to get this update made so here goes. It began on the 27th of April when I ordered a messor barbarus queen with some workers from antsrus. Within 48 hours of the order, a beautiful red-headed queen and her four humble nanatics had arrived with little to no stress, pleasantly surprising considering how many cases I have read of messor barbarus queens dying in the mail due to stress. For their setup, I had ordered a package out-world and formicarium from Antkit UK that looks a little like this with a few modifications which i will elaborate on in a bit.

(image courtesy of Antkit UK)

 

For a quick overview of the product, its relatively good and sturdy for a decent price with only one minor flaw, I've found that the lid when opening and closing is relatively stiff which can lead to unwanted vibrations stressing the queen and workers. However, I must stress the point this is both a starting young colony and is messor barbarus, so I can't see this as an issue for other such colonies. 

 

Whilst they were having a rest period before entering their new grounds I made a few modifications to the setup for easier use, the formicarium section was removed as this was not necessary until they reached 20-30 workers, and the Outworld was given some sand mix and a few pebbles I had acquired simply for a bit a bit of ambience and detail. Here they are settling into their new home.

 

After about a month and a half, they went from 4 to 13 workers and moved into a new clean test tube where they continued to grow to about 30 workers with a few media as well as a hefty pile of brood. It was around this time i decided to give the colony a name, someone suggested her majesties name to be Atlanta which is quite a simple name but fits just as well. As for the rest of the colony I nicknamed them 'barbs' as i found myself referring to them as such quite often. Here is Atlanta and her kin with a now fairly sizeable amount of brood in their testube.

 

Two months later they moved again into the formicarium I had saved where they grew to about 50 workers which is roughly where brood development steadily picked up the pace. Here is a picture of two weeks after the barbs moved in, first major pupa was seen here.

 

This now brings us up to the present day, where the barbs have now reached about 60-70 workers with plenty more on the way, they are now in a much bigger setup which i will save to talk about for the next update, next week.

 

 

Edited by Fatatoille, July 31 2020 - 2:56 AM.

[Fatatoille]

Update No.2 - 12/08/2020

In this update i will start by giving a quick tour of the barbs' current setup starting with their nest space. I decided to give them a digging medium to nest in because of all the journals I have read messor barbarus seem to flourish in naturalistic and digging medium setups, not to mention they can expand their nesting space accordingly to their current colony size. I think the only downside is I can't see Queen Atlanta anymore, although she does pop up in the main chamber occasionally so its not all bad. The whole setup consists of a 20x20cm XL antfarm from antstore and their old antkit outworld connected up with a piece of vinyl tubing.

Currently they are nesting under their old seed dish, I initially put it in there to instigate a move closer to the food source but eventually they just setup camp underneath it, eventually burying the seeds underneath a layer of sand. Thankfully, none of these have germinated so it doesn't seem to pose much of an issue so I've left it be.

Here is their very messy (pun intended) outworld. This is only from two weeks worth of food, they are quite overfed for a colony of about 100 ants. This is where their seed dishes are kept.

Also one of their granaries are kept in their tubes, they have done this since moving in and I think this is because they prefer to move the seeds a portion of the distance a time or this is a new satellite nest in the works as i have spotted them moving the occasional pupae down there from time to time. Note how they clump the sand-loam mix together with the seeds, not only

does this help reduce humidity around the granaries I have observed the larger media using the moist sand to move bundles of seeds back into the nest for consumption which was odd but interesting.

Edited by Fatatoille, August 13 2020 - 12:58 AM.

[Fatatoille]

Anyways, when I got back from London I knew they would be hungry, so the messors received a hoverfly, a personal favourite of theirs. A fair few pupae must have eclosed whilst I was away, the effects of their much higher protein providence over the last month was becoming more visible. though not as well shown in this picture.

Usually there was only 5 or six workers hoisting away the goods but at its peak there was 20 ants outside the nest. I also had observed two of the majors were helping with the heavy lifting (something I rarely saw prior) one of which was much larger than the other and had a more noticeable red head. Unfortunately, she had already gone back into the nest by the time I went to get my camera.

 

Over the next few days the barbs have been quite feisty with food where at one point they ate 2 flesh flies in one sitting, they have also developed a taste for a weird pollinating species of fly I caught on my verbena flowers. They don't usually eat these fatty sort of flies but they have been a real hit as the photo below indicates.

They even abandon the hoverflies in favor of these things.

 

On final notes, the colony as a whole is generally more active with around 10-15 ants outside the nest at all times with them peaking in activity at 20 workers at dawn and dusk and I also managed to spot a new bundle of  ~20-30 eggs being carried by a worker down the tubing earlier today, so her majesty has clearly been busy. I reckon they have surpassed 100 workers by now.

Edited by Fatatoille, August 12 2020 - 2:53 PM.

[ANTdrew]

I would love to keep this species if I lived in Europe. I’d grow a mega-colony of these and one of L. niger, and I’d be set.

[Antkid12]

Awesome!

[NickAnter]

I would love to keep this species if I lived in Europe. I’d grow a mega-colony of these and one of L. niger, and I’d be set.

What about Lasius brunneus?

[Fatatoille]

I would love to keep this species if I lived in Europe. I’d grow a mega-colony of these and one of L. niger, and I’d be set.

Messor barbarus is definitely one of the most rewarding species to keep, especially once they start hitting the thousands.

[ANTdrew]

I would love to keep this species if I lived in Europe. I’d grow a mega-colony of these and one of L. niger, and I’d be set.

What about Lasius brunneus?

Facts. And Lasius emarginatus, and Crematogaster scutellaris, and...

[Antkid12]

I'd like some Pheidole pallidula.

[Fatatoille]

Update No.4 - 21/08/2020

Disaster has struck. My colony had been doing great but seem to have been infected with a disease and it has been slowly killing members of the colony at a rate of death at about 2 workers per day with the occasional pupa or callow being infected. The current death toll stands at 16 as of this morning with 3 dead media, 12 minors, 2 callows and a pupa. If this disease continues to fester I could be left with nothing but the queen and a few majors by October. I have to assume it came in on a dead fly they were fed. A good reminder to always preemptively boil insects caught outside, a fundamental mistake i cannot make again. I plan to try a few things to try and mitigate the damage to the numbers of the colony that i will make mention of at a later date.

[ANTdrew]

Sorry, man. I hope they can recover.

[TechAnt]

Rest In Peace those fallen workers, may they rise from the ashes of their fallen ants.

[Fatatoille]

This will be a quickie but there have been no new cadavers for 2 days now, a positive sign that the disease might have finally fizzled out! Will do a proper post on this in the morning.

Edited by Fatatoille, August 26 2020 - 1:13 PM.

[TechAnt]

This will be a quickie but there have been no new cadavers for 2 days now, a positive sign that the disease might have finally fizzled out! Will do a proper post on this in the morning.

That’s great! Hoping for the best on your ants.

[Fatatoille]

Update No.5 - A very major update more like supermajor update...

After over two months of procrastinating I have finally, FINALLY got round to updating this journal, and by god has it been a rollercoaster for the barbs since their last update. The presumed 'infection' (more on that in a bit) never passed as I had hoped and many more ants continued to die, unto the point where they lost their first major.   By this time I decided to move them into a more perceptible setup in hopes of removing ants showing symptoms of dying to help reduce transmission to healthy ants, however by this point the colony was too big to be moved back into their old antkit formicarium and hence were moved into a tubs and tubes setup consisting of not only the obvious tub and test tubes but a strange petri dish sort of thing i managed to find. The move lasted 1.5 hours and was thankfully a breeze thanks to them only having one primary nesting chamber so a little light was enough to causing the majority of the colony to move into the vinyl tubing, oh whom were easily dumped into the new nest. By the end there was only a few stragglers remaining in the dirt formicarium of whom were later dug up from the nest and returned to their sisters.

Two months on and here they are now, as you can see, in typical messor fashion they have terraformed their new abode to their liking, moving half the sand to one side of the tub, covering up their seed bowl with sand and turning into their dumping grounds after emptying half the seeds and making a granary on top of the petri dish thing. Not to mention though not visible in the photo, they had decided to make the royal quarters behind the petri dish thing with over half the colony now nesting behind it. A few weeks later they made an established 'waiting room' of sorts where a few ants lingered and made ant bread, as well as a few medium sized larvae here and there.

however, through the past two months they have spent in here, the colony has stagnated in growth a bit with only two new generations with most new workers being minors and a few media, however...

first supermajor has appeared!   This supermajor is a real personality,spending most of her time lingering around the test tubes almost always in defence mode with mandibles open ready to bite... though contrary to her threatening demeanour she almost never helps with cutting up prey and seems to stay as far away from the main living quarters as possible, she's actually quite a lazy major. Though not only her personality is of interest  but her physical attributes also, I've noticed she has a weird malformed gaster that looks like a combination between a standard major and a minor worker, though this does not seem to be a hindrance to her. on final notes i have also noted more redhead majors and a redhead supermajor that hides in the dense mass behind the petri dish thing so although the colony is still relatively small in number they have at least got a fair few impressive workers!

 

 

 

 

 

 

[KitsAntVa]

Eeeeeeee good to hear you have a super major! Its crazy that they can rip through high quality and protection rubber gloves 

[smares]

Wow that super major looks so cool!

[Fatatoille]

Wow that super major looks so cool!

Indeed she is! this shoddy phone pic doesn't really do her justice however, not to mention she's only around 10mm, not bad for the first supermajor but I'm looking forward to seeing the 14mm giants this species produces.

 

Eeeeeeee good to hear you have a super major! Its crazy that they can rip through high quality and protection rubber gloves 

Given enough time they can breakdown most things, though messor barbarus seem to be better biting through material over the long term as oppose to just ripping through things on the spot. I've been bitten by some of the majors in my colony a few times now and its barely noticeable.

[Fatatoille]

Update No.6 24/11/2020

Looks like its time for the final update on these girls this year! While they started out strong, it must be said that my own foolishness cost the barbs many unnecessary deaths and they have finished off the year with little under 100 workers. However in last two months they have at least bounced back with a greater number of brood than anticipated, Altanta has working overtime with egg production like the amazing mother she is. Notably, they have more supermajors now as well, with an absolutely stunning red headed supermajor, not only is she the biggest of the four current supermajors in the colony she also has the biggest head out out of all of them. Though she also remains the shyest of all of them spending most of the time hiding in the water tube. Though annoyingly, given her timid nature most photos of her don't do justice to her beauty so I will probably upload a photo of her at a later date.

 

I also mentioned in the previous update that I would elaborate on the 'infection' that has been plaguing the barbs for quite some time. well it begins after I retired their old antstore formicarium I reused the old sand loam mix for outworlds in tupperware boxes for a young camponotus fellah colony and a pheidole pallidula colony, and within a week both colonies were losing workers slowly, removing both colonies. Given that these colonies were both healthy with sufficient amounts of brood and were not fed anything wild caught, as well as the fact that both outworlds solely consisted of sand loam mix and the ants' test tube with the tupperware boxes being pre-washed, this leads me to believe that there is a foreign substance present in the sand loam that may be the root cause of death in the barbs during their time in their old formicarium, though it is still plausible that infection from wild-caught flies caused the deaths. I plan to test this theory on some of my spare lasius niger workers to see if the high mortality rate is linked to the presence of the sand-loam mix next spring, as I would like to use this sand again for when the barbs are big enough to re-occupy their old home.

 

For their final meal before winter diapause and since its nearing thanksgiving i decided to give the barbs a treat, a piece of knock-off turkey!

This was a day later, they mobbed it when i dropped it in, chicken is definitely one of their all time favourite snacks.

 

Anyways, that's all for this year, hopefully next year will be a more prosperous year for the barbs.