81 replies to this topic

[sirjordanncurtis]

7-31 and 8-1

I had a feeling one of her pupa was going to eclose today (8-31) and she definitely did not disappoint. I took a few pictures about an hour before I saw the queen eclosing the worker. Today is day 36 since capture, which is about a week earlier than I had initially expected her to get workers. I also upped the heat after the queen got larvae, so that definitely contributed to her faster growth. YsTheAnt's placodops eclosed around 34 days after capture, which is nearly as fast as cocdeshijie's mexicanus. I'm very glad I got to see the queen's first worker before I left and could update on it.

Imgur link: https://imgur.com/a/deFFpIO

I have a video of them right now, but the quality isn't very sharp so I'm not sure if I'll post one just yet.

[JenC]

Congrats on the boosted worker!

[Shazza]

Exciting, hopefully more to follow soon

Edited by Shazza, August 1 2021 - 2:20 AM.

[Antkeeper01]

yay!!!!!!!! nanitic!

[NickAnter]

Very nice! Hopefully they prosper!

[sirjordanncurtis]

I just came back and immediately checked on the colony. They have 11 workers now and quite a bit of larvae. I'll update with pictures tomorrow morning, although with the state the tube is in, the quality probably won't be great.

[futurebird]

I just wanted to say that I have seen my Pogonomyrmex and formica subsericea feed an egg to a larvae. I think that's why often we will count like 30 eggs but end up with only 10 larvae. Perhaps eggs are just a simple way to store food and make ideal larvae snacks. Often ants separate the larvae from the eggs. I don't think that's just about temperature larva will eat eggs under some conditions, and I think this might be more normal than we think.

 

Just saying it's not always the queen who's doing the egg eating. 

 

Don't know if this applies here of course. I just thought it was interesting that some of your eggs disappeared just as you got larva.

 

This queen is lovely and the photos are excellent. Looking forward to see more of the story. Congrats on the new ant!

[sirjordanncurtis]

I just wanted to say that I have seen my Pogonomyrmex and formica subsericea feed an egg to a larvae. I think that's why often we will count like 30 eggs but end up with only 10 larvae. Perhaps eggs are just a simple way to store food and make ideal larvae snacks. Often ants separate the larvae from the eggs. I don't think that's just about temperature larva will eat eggs under some conditions, and I think this might be more normal than we think.

 

Just saying it's not always the queen who's doing the egg eating. 

 

Don't know if this applies here of course. I just thought it was interesting that some of your eggs disappeared just as you got larva.

 

This queen is lovely and the photos are excellent. Looking forward to see more of the story. Congrats on the new ant!

 

Yeah I was more worried about the queen burning herself out than the brood actually disappearing lol. I've heard stories of queens that use up all of their energy to make pupae and then end up dying.

[sirjordanncurtis]

YouTube video of clips from 8-8 to 8-9

[futurebird]

It's so cute how they have the same colors as the queen like little mini mes very "don't speak to me or my daughters ever again"

[sirjordanncurtis]

8-9

I'll be referencing different parts of the YouTube video from the last post and adding pictures here. I'm probably going to be relying on videos a lot more for coming updates because of how dirty their test tube is getting.

0:00: You can see the TON of larvae that they have (I stopped counting at 30). Most of these larvae were from before I even came back, and I'm a little confused about how they even found the food to raise these. I fed them some dubia on a piece of foil, and the workers loved it. They immediately dragged it back to the nest and began placing their larvae on it. This is probably the most receptive any of my formicine founding colonies have been to protein. The queen also has a third batch of eggs already...

1:01: More larvae eye candy

1:52: A lot of moving larvae

2:58: A second baby dubia that I fed today. Again, they were super interested in it and proceeded to move the dubia to the other end of the test tube basically immediately. I also gave them a piece of homegrown grapes which they liked as well. I'll probably stick to feeding these girls more solid sugar food until I can get them into a nest with a feeder. I tried feeding some sugar last night and 3 workers promptly decided to jump inside and get stuck. Thankfully, I pulled them out and their sisters cleaned them off 

Imgur link: https://imgur.com/a/WNl36j2

It's so cute how they have the same colors as the queen like little mini mes very "don't speak to me or my daughters ever again"

 

Lmao. The workers will also get a fuller red head eventually.

[futurebird]

Oh man I'm so glad you could save them. It's wild how ants will manage to drown themselves in honey. 

[JenC]

They're experimenting!!

[nurbs]

I just wanted to say that I have seen my Pogonomyrmex and formica subsericea feed an egg to a larvae. I think that's why often we will count like 30 eggs but end up with only 10 larvae. Perhaps eggs are just a simple way to store food and make ideal larvae snacks. Often ants separate the larvae from the eggs. I don't think that's just about temperature larva will eat eggs under some conditions, and I think this might be more normal than we think.
 
Just saying it's not always the queen who's doing the egg eating. 
 
Don't know if this applies here of course. I just thought it was interesting that some of your eggs disappeared just as you got larva.
 
This queen is lovely and the photos are excellent. Looking forward to see more of the story. Congrats on the new ant!

Correct!

[KadinB]

Wow I enjoyed reading through all this. VERY COOL!

[sirjordanncurtis]

8-25

It's been a little over two weeks since I last updated. The ants are still doing well. They actually only have 12 workers right now, because I stole one of their pupae to give to an M. mendax queen and I accidentally killed 2 workers because I didn't feed enough sugar but was feeding a lot of protein  . However, they've also been growing steadily and have 22 pupae from my last count yesterday. They also have a few smaller larvae that should pupate by end of this week or mid next week. 

 

Some pictures of the Myrmecocystus mendax queen, her brood, and the M. placodops worker.

 

Imgur link: https://imgur.com/a/5v6dXkZ

Drive link for uncompressed videos

Edited by sirjordanncurtis, August 24 2021 - 9:19 PM.

[B_rad0806]

You got lucky my queen decided to cause mass pupae failure. I'd be catching up to you.

[JenC]

Nice mendax brood. Didn't know the placs needed the boost though!

[sirjordanncurtis]

9-6

 

The second batch of workers have been eclosing. It was getting really hard for me to feed them sugar inside of the tube, but I didn't have a mini hearth, so I blocked off the top 2/3s of a fortress and moved the colony inside today. They're doing fairly well, although this colony is probably the most sugar intensive small colony I've had. I've had 3 workers now die from unknown causes that I attribute to having not enough sugar because the deaths always happened when most of their gasters seem empty. I had to move them into the fortress because they had another death today, and it hadn't even been 48 hours since I last fed them. The moment I dumped the colony into the fortress, half the workers went for the liquid feeder :\

 

 

Imgur link: https://imgur.com/a/pbcUT1D

[That_one_ant_guy]

Update?