The parasitic/slave raiding ant Formica aserva is my favorite local ant species, and I have been observing/learning about them since I was a little kid, which is why I attempted to keep them even though it was my second year of ant keeping. They are most commonly found in the mountains in my area, where there is an abundance of hosts. After climbing over 13,000 vertical feet in a day in August 2021, I decided to celebrate by finally collecting a Formica aserva queen. Once I had some small host pupae, I hiked the rest of the way up and paraglided down to make her a test tube. I gave her around 30 host pupae in a bare tube sitting against her setup to see how she would react to the overabundance. As expected, she neglected them for a while, and the workers were emerging deformed from the low humidity. She also chewed into a few of them, but once some healthy workers appeared the brood was moved into the normal setup. The colony ended up with about 15 host workers, and 8 biological workers when it was released.
Other than being skittish and hypersensitive to vibration, they were not hard to keep and proved to be similar to my Camponotus novaeboracensis in terms of care requirements. I decided to collect another queen in late September and give her 6 host pupae. She did not lay any eggs before hibernation since it was later in the year. They did very well over the hibernation period, which lasted until March 15, and have been growing fairly quickly. I counted over 35 aserva workers today and the colony is active and healthy looking. Someone is still borrowing the camera I was going to use, and the photos from earlier this year somehow got lost, but I will add some later.
