245 replies to this topic

[honourable]

dude these ants are fortified in your dirt box. mine won't budge. maybe they'll move when its too crowded for them

[dspdrew]

Haha, just let it dry out. That's what I'm doing. They definitely like it in those things. I had a colony that lost its queen so I set it on the back patio and pulled the plug. A week later, they were all still in there.

[dspdrew]

Update 3-12-2016
 
All the colonies are still doing great.
 
Some of these guys look like candy.
 

 

 

 

 

 
 
The colony in the glass vase has finally dug a nest, and moved most of the colony in. It looks like it's mainly just repletes that are left in the old nest. I have a feeling they are just going to be left there to die. I've always wondered what happens when a honeypot ant colony moves.
 

 

 
 
These workers stand guard while the others work.
 

 

 

 
 
You can see the chambers they've dug already. Unfortunately, it's not very clear.
 

 

[Here for the honeypots]

You should eat those bad boys if
they don't move

[klawfran3]

You should eat those bad boys if
they don't move

Mmmm... artificial hummingbird nectar and formula blue. My favorite.

[dspdrew]

Update 3-12-2016
 
The queens have really started laying a lot of eggs lately. My largest colonies are somewhere around 80 workers now, and in one of them, I must have counted probably 150 larvae and 30 pupae.
 
I never realized how how badly they want their trash moved away from their nests. I have noticed some of them in the "dirt boxes" continually carrying trash up the sides of the container, only to end up going nowhere. I wasn't sure why until now. I've been putting some of them in fluon-covered tubs, and opening the lids to allow them to run around and get some food, and the first thing they do is start carrying all the trash out of the box. Once all the trash is moved out, and they are all filled up on food, they all go back in the nest and I can easily put the lid back on.
 
My Pheidole hyatti just don't seem to be recovering, so a week ago I decided to move them out of the prototype formicarium I had them in, and move one of these colonies into it instead. It was pretty dirty, so I cleaned it up as good as I could.
 
I set their "dirt box" in the out world, pulled the plug, and covered the sides with fluon to keep the ants from going up over the top once the box was opened.
 

 

 

 

 
 
They started checking out the nest right away, but still haven't moved in. They will most likely wait until the "dirt box" is dried out before moving. Unfortunately, they decided to use the formicarium as a trash can, so I'll probably have to open it back up and clean it out again before they move in. There's already some trash in there molding with that yellow desert mold that the springtails won't eat.
 

 
 
The colony in the vase has stopped digging for now. You don't see them out at all now during the day. It's funny watching them work on their nest. They team up to carry some pretty big pieces of gravel out.
 

 

 
 
They have a few chambers now, one of which is probably about 20 inches deep. I can see they have the queen down in the very bottom chamber. It looks like they ended up with three of their repletes. They managed to move two on their own, and I moved one for them. All the rest of the repletes died in the move.
 

 

 
 
Here's some pictures of the vase colony feeding on one of my kevlar liquid feeders.
 

 

 

[NightsWebs]

Drew that's really cool looking. Still a bummer about not being able to see them clearly but I think they will do really well in the large vase.  I like the triangular feeders.

[LC3]

Do you think they'll take all the food out of the repletes and then get them to move?

[dspdrew]

Repletes don't shrink back down all the way once they are emptied. I have seen some spitting a lot of the liquid out though.

[Shaye]

They basically look like deflated balloons after, right?

[dspdrew]

More like popped plastic bags.

[Gregory2455]

Cupcake toppings.

[dspdrew]

Update 4-13-2016
 
The colony I was trying to move into  the formicarium has finally started moving in. They have all of the small larvae in there now, and about a quarter of the workers hanging out with them.

[dspdrew]

Update 4-22-2016
 
The colony I'm moving into the formicarium has just finished fully moving in. Unfortunately the only thing left is the repletes, but those will probably just stay there and die.
 
The "dirt vase" colony is still doing well and growing. They have dug all the way down to the bottom now.
 
The colony in the large "dirt box", which is my largest colony now, is probably going to be up to about 500 workers in a month after all this brood ecloses.
 

 

 
 
This picture's blurry, but the bottom is just blanketed with small larvae.
 

 
 
And it continues around the corner.
 

 
 
And here is the egg pile. The only thing I left out is the large larvae, which are kind of spread around in a few different locations, so nothing to really get a good picture of.
 

[dspdrew]

Update 4-27-2016
 
The colony I was moving into the formicarium is finally completely moved in. For the last few days there was nothing but three repletes left. They managed to move the smallest one into the nest themselves eventually. I tried moving the other two, which actually turned out to not be all that hard, except one rolled out of the "dirt box" so fast, that I wasn't ready and it fell onto the bottom of my cabinet.   The replete I successfully moved, just barely fit down the 1/4 inch tube in the entrance. Any bigger, and it wouldn't have made it in. At least now I know if  they're not too big, I can move them myself.
 

 

 
 
This is the replete I moved. They spent a while cleaning it after I moved it in there.
 

 

 

 

 
 
This is probably the most colorful colony I have.
 

 
 
I like how their chambers look when they dig them out themselves.
 

 

[LC3]

Ouch,  poor replete that certainly doesn't look pretty.

[antmaniac]

The way they hold the replete, reminds me of my Pheidole dragging oversized alate brood. By the way, for the glass formicarium, what happen if the nest collapsed?

[dspdrew]

It can't collapse because of the way it's designed.

[dspdrew]

Update 5-30-2016
 
The colony in the large "dirt box" is still growing rapidly. This one has the biggest repletes I've seen yet. The biggest ones are about 10mm in diameter.
 
Here's some pictures of all sides of their nest.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[dspdrew]

Update 7-28-2016
 
The colony in the large "dirt box" is still my best colony.

 

The colony in the formicarium is not doing very well. They are still producing, but it seems like just as many workers keep dying as they are producing, so the colony is not growing. I think that formicarium is just too damp for them. This is why I am changing my design a bit to make them much drier.

 

The colony in the giant glass vase has completely died off. I have no idea why, but one by one the workers just kept dying until finally the last few workers and the queen were found in the very bottom chamber covered in bright yellowish green mold. I got a great idea on how to clean the nest out so I could try again with another one of my smaller colonies. I just dropped about ten Pogonomyrmex rugosus workers in there, and within one day, all the dead ants and mold were gone. They cleaned all the garbage out of the nest just like I knew they would. As each worker was found outside the nest, I just grabbed it and tossed it back into its formicarium. Next I poured a ton of springtails down the nest, and within a couple days, all the yellow spores that I could see in the chamber and on the glass were completely gone. Now the nest is perfectly clean, and I'm in the process of moving another colony into it. Hopefully this nest colony does a little better.