6 replies to this topic

[Fatatoille]

14/08/2021

 

I have decided to start a new multiple species journal to save some time writing updates for pre-existing journals or clogging up the forum by starting new ones that will inevitably have no long term outcome. As expected, all my currently ongoing colonies will be listed here as well as some new species. some updates may be as small as a few photos, and colonies will come and go as times change. Beginning with previous colonies no longer in my possesion:

 

1. camponotus floridanus - rehomed due to space restrictions.

 

2. carebara diversa - rehomed due to space restrictions.

 

3. lasius niger and flavus - a large majority of the colonies didn't make it through hibernation as the shed I stored them in got too cold, remaining colonies were given away with foreknowledge that they would also take up space long term.

 

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messor barbarus ('barbs')

 

The barbs are still going strong as my longest running colony, though the past few months have been a bit eventful, I got round to moving them into a new nest, the same design I was previously using for my novomessor, which I brought from aliexpress. There are no good photos worth showing of them as they have nestles into a tube that makes it hard to take good photos, though they are about at 250 workers now, with several large redhead majors, and have entered some sort of stagnation period. I believe this was caused by a high protein diet from insects as workers were dying as fast as they were being produced. They are now limited down to one cricket per 3 days and deaths have since slowed down again, though only time will tell whether this has any effect. 

 

There was also a brief escape from where I obliviously knocked one of the nesting tubes and didn't notice until the following day when there was ants all over my shelf, the colony lost about 50 workers. Though still a setback, the escape was not as bad as it could have been.

 

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novomessor cockerelli

 

These ladies have been doing remarkably well and have quickly exceeded the growth of a lot of my current colonies. i moved them into an aliexpress nest at the same time as my messors and within 6 weeks they had outgrown it.

 

recently moved in:

queen:

 

when they exceeded the capacity of the nest, i moved them into a temporary tubs and tubes setup. Because I don't feed my novomessor any seeds, they get their carbohydrates from sugar water. They do fine and dandy on this, and its always nice to watch them cluster around a liquid feeder.

 

novomessor rush hour:

 

currently they have grown to about 400 workers with the colony sprawled between a wakooshi and a knock off THA modular nest from aliexpress. They can easily demolish 5-6 adult crickets within 24 hours and are always so much fun to watch climbing about. I also took some time to make a little plaster base with some pebbles and a decorative pyramid in the outworld, while it's not much, I am quite happy with how it turned out. 

 

novomessor workers on break:

 

novomessor with a recently molted mealworm:

 

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Iridomyrmex anceps

 

A new colony I got not too long ago, they've had a bit of a rollercoaster of growth. I bought them from mierwinkel, a notoriously bad shop with a reputation for selling dirt cheap colonies, though generally in poor condition on arrival. As one might expect, I ordered a colony with 21-30 workers only for an emaciated queen and a few workers in a dry test tube to show up instead. They rebounded really well getting back up to five workers with a decent pile of brood, though I had to leave for a trip on short notice and therefore had to leave my colonies in the care of someone else. Unfortunately, I came home to find the queen with 2 workers and a smaller pile of brood, albeit well fed. They stagnated after that, every time a new worker would eclose, another worker would die a few days later. currently the queen is down to one worker and a few larvae, they may rebound, though my hopes are not too high.

 

(no photos this time)

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anoplolepis custodiens

 

This was a south african species I was wanting to keep for the longest time, though nobody ever sold them, recently I got lucky enough to find myants.de selling a few colonies of these and bought one for myself. This was a 4 queen colony without about 100 workers, merged from two seperate colonies i purchased. Not much research has been done on these ants as nobody has seemed to have any success with raising a large colony, so it was mostly down to me to figure out what to do with them. their behaviour is very strange, and they seem to work on a cycle of laying a batch of eggs, foraging for a month, and then cease activity while the larvae pupate and eclose, i have no idea why they do this, though I am speculative that this is to avoid the hottest times of the year. Given their somewhat confusing cycle for foraging, I thought the colony was stagnating and decided to take them off heat for a while, they lost a queen during this time, though they have resumed foraging. This colony is staying off heat for now however until I can make some more room and get them out of the tube they are currently living in.

 

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 Atta laevigata

 

As much as I hate to admit it, I was quite uninterested with atta and fungus growers in general, with a preference to keeping more predatory ants, though after reading cheetolord02's atta mexicana journal and seeing how impressive a decent sized colony can be, I thought I would take a stab at keeping some atta laevigata, a funny looking species that gets some really shiny headed soldiers, which I am a big fan of.

 

As with a few of my other colonies I have purchased these laevigata came from myants.de. As always, they were reliably packed with a good amount of fungus and over double the workers the colony was listed to arrive with. Following the guidance of cheetos fungus grower guide, I whipped up some containers with a plaster base that did the trick nicely.

 

the fungus and colony after being inserted into their new home, the queen dwarfs all the other workers by a landslide:

 

less than a week later, they decided to start up a second fungus garden in their garbage chamber. It was a bit confusing why they did this but i assume it was due to the direction the heat lamp was facing, and therefore they wanted to get closer to the heat source.

 

secondary fungus garden at 1 week:

 

vs 3 weeks (the fungus sure does grow like wildfire):

 

I have been experimenting with different leaves to see what they prefer and their favourites so far have been privet hedge leaves, foxglove flowers, dandelion weeds, pinhead oats, and a creeping plant on my garden wall. sometimes they get a treat like some fruit.

 

heres a blackberry I offered them, it didn't garner much interest, but some workers would bite the skin and suck the juices from time to time:

 

worker on a leaf:

 

3 weeks ago the primary garden was getting to big for its previous container:

 

I resoved to expand the setup and move the queen and secondary garden to a larger container, this went smoothly and after some rearrangement, the secondary garden looks a lot bigger and more stable, the queen even managed to find a little crevice to sit in, where she stays to this day:

 

secondary fungus garden in bigger chamber:

 

queen in crevice: 

 

lots of brood!

 

 

 

 

 

[Antkeeper01]

yes!!! another atta journal inside a journal

[ANTdrew]

Wow!

[Fatatoille]

hey! well its been a hot minute since my my last on my colonies, a lot has changed with some new colonies and some of my older ones failing so I will start with some of the colonies that are gone:

 

 

 

• iridomyrmex anceps: the final worker died, and the queen shortly after.
• anoplolepis custodiens: the colony stopped accepting protein, and eventually fizzled out, they were always a bit temperamental but I'm not too sure what caused them to stop eating.
• atta laevigata: the colony was starting to get too big to handle so I gave them to a friend, they are still doing great and must be around 50k or so buy now. here's an older video of them in their setup. (the fungus is about twice this size now.)

https://www.youtube....h?v=-NsKTm_QxfE

 

 

colonies still in my possession:

 

• novomessor cockerelli: still doing great and are my favourite colony to own so far, they have around 1.5k workers and have also started to rear alate brood, this will be first colony to rear a large number of alates aside from the odd drone, so I'm pretty proud of them.

a photo of some workers in one of the aliexpress nests attached.

a worker with alate larvae, a queen by the looks of it.

• messor barbarus: put the colony into early diapause and they came out last week, they have about 2000 workers now and are in desperate need of a setup upgrade, I'm planning on giving them their old ant store substrate nest. no photos this time.
• liometopum microcephalum: got this colony with 20 workers in october, once they hit around 100 workers the queen randomly died. After a month I managed to get a replacement queen which was successfully introduced to the colony. whilst she lays frequently none of the larvae are developing, leading me to believe this queen is infertile unfortunately. for now they are in diapause and i am waiting to see what will happen in march.

enjoying a cricket while the fertile queen was still alive.

• pheidole nodus: I got what I thought was a 4 queen colony with 50 workers in december, upon doing a head count I realized there is an extra queen. In typical pheidole fashion, they have grown quickly to about 250-300 workers, and will be in need of a new nest expansion soon. (no images at the moment)
• messor barbarus 2: someone gave me a messor barbarus colony as a gift, so I thought I would have another colony to keep for fun, they have about 8 workers and a nice pile of brood. there has been no diapause for them this year.

 

• brachymyrmex bruchi: got a small colony of these after my iridomyrmex died, they should not get anywhere near as large as the anceps, so I don't have to worry about space as much. they have around 10 workers and a small brood pile. I've heard brachymyrmex queens like to spontaneously die so fingers crossed that does not happen. (no photos at the moment)

that's all for now, I'm also planning on getting some pheidole sinica, myrmicaria brunnea and possibly some polyrhachis soon as well.

 

[ANTdrew]

No basic ants for you! Glad to see you back.

[Fatatoille]

Update time again! starting with deceased colonies:

 

• Liometopum microcephalum - after keeping them for a while longer, the new introduced queen continued to lay eggs, though these never developed. Assumably she was infertile, which was really unfortunate considering how hard this species is to get a hold of. Though having spoke to some other people who have kept the species, usually its the workers who die, so regardless I think this was a good start. Another species to add to my list of things to keep again when they become more available.
• Brachymyrmex bruchi - another unfortunate situation, this colony was had started booming in growth and was about at 50 workers before their water test tube ran out. I was away at the time and the colony died of dehydration whilst I was gone. should have gave them another water tube. 
• Pheidole sinica - this was a brief interaction but I managed to buy a small colony of about 30 workers and a queen with a great amount of brood, they were doing really well until the queen spontaneously died after only two weeks in my care, I don't think I've seen or heard of a single successful pheidole sinica colony this year despite their abundance on the eu market.

Colonies currently in my care:

• Novomessor cockerelli - my pride and joy; these girls produced their first batch of queen alates back in late February! 
  

They produced around 20 queens, each eclosing and eventually dropping their wings to work as foraging queens. That being said, given that these queens were produced out of season, I presume they were just a biproduct of my overfeedings. It goes to show just how much these girls can process at a time. That being said, the novos followed that up by producing hundreds of drones grown from haploid eggs laid by the workers, this sudden appearance of drones was synchronised with an increase in worker policing, strongly suggesting that workers were laying viable eggs.

I'm not sure why the workers suddenly starting laying mountains of viable eggs only within this timeframe, but if I were to take a guess its a lot quicker for a colony to get their alates out through hundreds of workers laying a couple of eggs every day as oppose to the queen laying 200 viable eggs over a couple of weeks. though with the appearance of these drones, any worker brood has been absent from where the queen is not laying, as such, over the past couple of months worker numbers have decline to around 400 workers. This was not unsuspected though given many other observations of colonies declining for a while post alates, though they usually bounce back. I rest assured my girls will be fine and pull through.

• Myrmicaria colonies 1/2 - as I mentioned in my earlier post I was planning on getting some myrmicaria brunnea, of which I have not one, but two colonies. one was a single queen boosted with 50 workers, the other a queen with 8 workers through founding of her own. growth was initially very slow with about 2 months for new workers as neither colonies arrived with brood, surprising considering this species is relatively average at around 5-6mm. interestingly colony 1, the larger colony, produced some big monster workers right off the bat, which was a bit confusing.
  

After that minor hurdle, both colonies have grown at an alarming rate. Colony 2 ended up overtaking colony 1 in growth eventually, and has since been moved. Colony 2 currently stands at 400 workers with a few queen alates, which I think appeared for the same reason as mentioned with the novomessor.

interesting appearance of queen alates:

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=isVF7-4XBrE

 

colony 1 is currently in a bit of a poor situation as despite having a couple hundred workers, I don't have any more space to move them into a new setup so they are currently residing in their tiny nest. 

https://www.youtube....rts/tQXQyVAYbEY

 

• Iridomyrmex purpureus - These seem like the new novomessor for their appetite and growth rate. Got them at 15 workers, went inert and lost a few workers for the first two months of keeping them. but in no time they've rebounded and have about 400-500 workers and a ton of brood, queens even starting to get a bit mor physogastric. The lovely thing about this species is how well they keep their eggs clumped together in a big pile, easily its bigger than the queen herself

 

• Big ol' barbs - my oldest colony in my possession, next April will mark 3 years since I've had them, its been lovely how despite having so many colonies come and go over the years, these girls have stayed relatively consistent and chug along in the background. I finally moved them back into their old dirt nest, and they have grown even more disproportionately to around 3000-3500, I'm planning on giving them another vertical anstore digfix setup as they are incredibly space efficient and the barbs seem to like them. no photos unfortunately. 

 

• smaller messor colony - this colony has not been given much attention and left to do their own thing, living off solely seeds, in the 9 months I've had them, they've grown to ~180 workers which I think is okay considering. 

https://www.youtube....rts/2n2yDXx7Aqc

 

• Messor cephalotes - another all time favourite species of mine, these have been widely available on the eu market this year and I managed to snag a queen with brood for a bargain. after a short founding period, 7 workers eclosed and set to work gathering seeds immediately. Despite the reputation these ants have for actively hunting whilst other messor species are a bit more timid and limited to scavenging dead insects, my colony refuses to even accept the smallest dead cricket or fruit fly, bizarre considering how protein hungry my barbs were when they were that size and how other peoples cephalotes colonies are accepting insects. Regardless, it has zero effect on colony progress and the brood has continued to grow at a commensurate rate as expected, with a second gen incoming of about 5-6 workers. I will say, this colony is fairly headstrong though compared to other messor species relative to their size. The workers will quite happily continue pacing around their nest even after exposed to light or vibrations; the queen also exhibits a similar behaviour, though opting to stay still instead. 

https://www.youtube....rts/M3KrdI9eEQI (excuse the poor quality)

 

• Pheidole nodus - these girls have had a bit of a rocky road, after being moved a few times due to insufficient escape prevention, as well as the sudden production of 50-100 males, a healthy 800 worker strong pheidole colony decline to a mere 50. They recently were moved to a new wakooshi nest with a proper outworld and are now doing much better, though a few of their queens have died, leaving two fertile ones left, I suspect a few may have been infertile.

https://www.youtube....rts/WMoCAlQBzNg

 

other side notes - I have a few more lasius colonies from queens I captured during nuptials this year. These colonies are serving the role of battery colonies as I hope to use them for hosts for lasius fuliginosus next year, as such there will not be much on them, though if a colony gets big enough I may make expand in further detail on them.

 

well that's all, until next time folks!

 

[ANTdrew]

Good to see you back.