91 replies to this topic

[JAnt]

Update:

This colony continues to do well. They still have piles of brood every time. I’ve tried stealing a few pupae once to brood boost a queen with a few workers I’ve received of the same species, and they’ve spread their brood piles in each of the mini hearths ever since that one time . I recently turned off the heat cables since it’s been hot these days. A nucleus would be pretty nice with this colony, but it could turn out too much space for them.

MH1


MHXL


Trying something new




Here’s the colony I brood boosted. They are the darker variety, making the boosted workers from my main colony look like callow workers; sadly, the queen hasn’t laid any eggs since the workers she came with when I received them. It would be nice to raise a colony of the darker variety tho!


Thanks for checking out my journal!

Edited by JAnt, September 9 2022 - 10:57 AM.

[JAnt]

Update!

I decided to add another nest extension making it the 5th nest attachment, and now it looks like a train, lol. The colony is still doing great with a ton of brood. I’ve stopped seeing male alates, but all female alates are still around.

Most of the brood is located in this section.


This one is where they keep seeds and caste of what they ate before taking it to the trash in the outworld.


This section’s outworld is the most active since this is where the ByFormica nectar is present.


This one has been filled, and I made a lot of vibrations, so most are in the outworld at the time of the photo taken.


New extension!


When I made too much vibration and disturbed them upon connecting a new connection, they all went out and started forming a thick wall of workers. I thought it was worth sharing this behavior.

It’s only been a week, and this is how much the new extension is filled! All the rest of the mini hearths are also filled!

[ANTdrew]

Awesome! I probably should go your route and add on more nests. The idea of trying to move my colony is really intimidating, but I would like to give them a much bigger and more secure outworld. The downside of lots of connections is more potential escape points for the tiny ants. Hmmm

[JAnt]

Awesome! I probably should go your route and add on more nests. The idea of trying to move my colony is really intimidating, but I would like to give them a much bigger and more secure outworld. The downside of lots of connections is more potential escape points for the tiny ants. Hmmm

Making the colony move will be challenging. The colony never got rid of the female alates, so now I have wingless female alates acting queen; I have no idea which ones are my two original queens. All my escapees gather all the debris they can find near their entrance. I don't need to worry about cleaning the table (I estimate a total of 20 escapees a week from opening the outworld to feed). The idea of a bigger outworld sounds excellent, although finding a secure one is difficult.

[JAnt]

[AntsCali098]

What a thriving colony!

[Ants_Dakota]

Look into a cheaper just nest for them now. Once they are growing that fast, i would not want to be spending hundreds of dollars on them each year personally. There are some good cheap large ones out there somewhere.

[JAnt]

Merry Christmas!

Now that it’s December, things began to slow down, with the colony starting by the end of November. The colony has been doing well, the production has slowed down, and there are barely any workers in the outworld. They’ve also been consuming more seeds this time (Chia seeds). I doubt there will be anything new till spring comes around to look forward to their change of activity!

-There are no winged alates present anywhere in this colony, and the number of dealate females has significantly reduced from 80+ to about no more than 10-15 dealates roaming in the nest. (Hopefully they didn’t execute the two original queens).




Thanks for checking out this journal!

Edited by JAnt, December 25 2022 - 10:10 PM.

[Ant-nig321]

Wow,you have an amazing colony!

Edited by Ant-nig321, December 25 2022 - 11:15 PM.

[Stmendoza1011]

Such a healthy colony, you’re doing an excellent job with them!! I’ll have to read this thread out-loud to my Pheidole hyatti to inspire them 🤣

[JAnt]

Update!

The colony has been doing well. I lost workers worth close to a whole mini hearth, not through die-out but escapees. I assumed they were still inactive and only checked once or twice weekly as I got busy. To my surprise, one of the lids on the outworld wasn’t all the way pushed in, so the minor workers were able to fit in (thankfully) majors and queens secured.

In short, more workers are foraging nowadays, and I may slowly start increasing their feeding days back to the regular schedule. Hopefully, we’ll see the eggs and brood build up soon and witness how much this colony will increase in numbers this year! (It’s about to be their 3rd year under my care in 1 1/2 weeks, but it could be around 4th, 5th, or more year overall since they were dug up from an established colony when I purchased them; at least for the duo Queen .

All the escapees were all dead behind the mini heart; they were foraging the seeds I dropped during feeding times, but there was also a tiny spider that had all its webs spread out throughout the back “The Spider Police.”


Thanks for checking out the journal; I’ll share a photo of the Spider trap.

Edited by JAnt, March 11 2023 - 8:31 AM.

[ANTdrew]

Congrats on making it this far with them. I just made a new mega-outworld for my P. bicarinata with Fort Knox level escape proofing.

[JAnt]

Thank you! Looking forward to how much this colony will keep growing.

Congrats on the new outworld! I’d provide mine if given the time.

Edited by JAnt, March 12 2023 - 7:24 AM.

[JAnt]

Update!

It has been 3 months since my last update with this journal.

Setup: 5 mini hearths attached (2 regular and 3 XLs)

This colony has only been feeding 2-3 times a month of protein since February as I have gotten busy. Still, they always had chia seeds available all the time, and I’ve recently been providing them with more protein.

Colony size has stabilized for the last few months, but their brood is slowly piling up, and we’ll see how much these little ones grow.

To my surprise, they never got rid of the dealate queens in the nest, so there are around 20 or more in there! We either had an inbreeding take place, or this specific colony of mine doesn’t mind the extras besides our 2 original queens !!!

3 years and 4 months and still going!
One of the XL hearts


Actively going after a fresh dubia roach.


Thanks for checking this journal!

Edited by JAnt, June 13 2023 - 10:29 PM.

[Ernteameise]

Looking at this I am very tempted to order another Mini Hearth and also get into Pheidole!

Are you using just the normal Mini Hearths? I see that yours only have the two magnets, so these are not the products for small ants?

[JAnt]

Pheidole are fun species! You should give it a try!

These species are in the tiny/small category. Still, I’ve had success in housing them in standard-size mini hearths, and I also have 3 XL mini hearths designed for medium/XL species, but I never had any problems with anything.

I started with a test tube with 100 workers; then, I transferred to a mini hearth.
Pheidole are fun species! You should give it a try!

Edited by JAnt, June 14 2023 - 2:55 PM.

[AntsCali098]

The colony looks to be doing well and are awesome as usual!

Do you know the cap colony size for this species? They seem like they'd be a handful to care for.

Have you ever had any escapes? If you haven't, that's honestly impressive and a testament to the mini hearth's quality!

[bmb1bee]

What are your tips in growing the colony to such an impressive size? My single-queen colony has a few hundred workers and a big pile of brood, but is nowhere near the size of your colony yet. They haven’t really even outgrown their tubs and tube setup yet, while yours have occupied multiple THA mini-hearths (given their time of a couple years compared to my colony’s few months).

[Ernteameise]

I agree with AntsCali098 and bmb1bee-

they ask very good questions which I am also curious about.

Please enlighten us.

I am still very much tempted to try, by the way.

[JAnt]

In response to AntsCali098,

From a little bit of research, cap size was never explicitly mentioned, but a couple of thousands. This colony can be a handful, keeping up the barrier around the outworld, as they can be very active in spring and summertime. In Fall and Winter, they are calm enough, leaving the outworld open, and only a few would walk out, significantly if you just dropped a meal. They are like fire ants but calmer and more manageable.

I never had escapees with the mini hearths themselves, but I watch out to push in the lead sealed constantly. They can sneak out, only the tiny minors, which isn't a true escape as they hang out around the entrance gathering the chia seeds that I forgot to clean up.

In my estimation, each mini-hearth holds about 1k, while XL can probably have around 2k. Thinking about it, I had all two mini hearths and three mini hearths XL filled out, then this colony had about a little more than five thousand workers, and they were still growing with their massive pile of broods.

Edited by JAnt, June 16 2023 - 9:32 AM.