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[Full_Frontal_Yeti]

Not a lot going on here to report. The Queen is back on egg laying again and the colony seems to be doing well. She never swells but keeps a steady pace up for months on end, then takes a 3-6 week break. Not sure on how long she pauses, but both times the brood pile will shrink down to maybe 4-6 late stage larvae/pupae before I notice more starting to show up again.

The trash pile during such times turns into mostly dead ants, kind’a gross, but for as big as the pile of dead gets you can’t really tell the colony has shrunk in numbers.

 

Here they had two clutches next to each other. One on the wall above, one on the mesh of the water tower below it.

 

up next to the top glass

 

on the mesh below

Edited by Full_Frontal_Yeti, March 12 2025 - 11:12 AM.

[OwlThatLikesAnts]

Has there been any more special ants like Meg the MutANT?

[AntsCali098]

I've always wanted to raise a big colony of Pogonomyrmex, but they always end up dying after nanitics for some reason unknown to me. I'll try again this year, as P.californicus is very easy to catch in my area. You seem to have a very long lasting colony. Do you have any tips for the genus? What seeds do you use to feed them?

[Full_Frontal_Yeti]

Has there been any more special ants like Meg the MutANT?

Nope. I did spot one ant with just one antenna a few months back. But by then the colony was so big i lost track of them quickly and have not spotted them again sense.
As they had one still, they were behaving as a normal ant and just blended into the crowd. So i can't say if they were born lacking one or if they lost it.

Meg was easy to spot even after the colony stared getting thicker. She was just a little bigger than typical and behaved oddly, sense she simply couldn't "hear" the other ants to follow their group behaviors. So even when there were a good number of ants, she stood out as easy to spot.

 

 

I've always wanted to raise a big colony of Pogonomyrmex, but they always end up dying after nanitics for some reason unknown to me. I'll try again this year, as P.californicus is very easy to catch in my area. You seem to have a very long lasting colony. Do you have any tips for the genus? What seeds do you use to feed them?

I got them as a 20+ founded colony from TarHeelAnts. From all my reading i'd estimate founding of this species fails 80-90% of the time even under the best conditions. Suggesting potentially weak genetics in some way if they fail so commonly even under optimal predator free conditions.


I'd point out that someone posting here has had good sucess doing simple dirt based founding setups and provided a thread of their findings.
However as far as i can figure TarHeelAnts does his as tube and tubes, and he's doing this at a commercial scale offering founded colonies practically year round.

I been feeding them a wide variety of seeds, a bulk of which is dandelion and kentucky blue grass which i bought from THA. I also pick up poppy, chia, flax and whatever else seems small enough for them from the bulk isle.
And some kind of insect feeder/fish flake/meat (about once a week or less depending on the size of the brood pile). I make sure to let them keep a bit of a larder of seeds as they would in the wild, but only give them more proteins once they are mostly done with the last bits i gave them.

I've always made sure to have some gradient of heat for them, even in a mini hearth i kept heat to one side.
While it is overkill for a lot of keepers, i've loved using a thermostat to automate nest temp control. And now that it is expanded to multiple nests I'm better able to mimic the conditions of getting a consistent year round temp deeper under ground.
With the "top" of the nest heated in parts to the mid/high 80s(f), and they keep the brood mostly in this nest. While the "lowest" part of the nest a constant 71f/72f. The Queen has taken up residence in a chamber there and rarely leaves.


And the only thing i've done that's fairly side of bell as far as i can tell, is give them a lot of outworld. Like a whole whole lot more outworld relative to the colony size, compare to what i see commonly. When they were just in the 20+ size in a minihearth, i also hooked up the otuworld from a fallenfortress, quadrupling their outworld space compared to the mninhearth alone. And i've always kept it this way with as much outworld space as i can manage for them. They take full advantage, even from day one they kept their trash pile as far from the nest entrance as they could go with it.
The main outworld being detached has also meant overall less nest disturbance, as all the feeding and cleaning done there never disturbs the nest enough to stress them out.
 

[Full_Frontal_Yeti]

OMG the queen is laying eggs like a machine right now. I so wish i could get a good pic of these egg piles but the macro is about 1/2mm too short a focus to the bottom of the nest.
I had generally estimated she drops 5-10 a day or so in a fairly steady pace.

 

In the two years I've had them i have never once seen a lone egg by itself. They are tiny, and when held as a single by a worker, can't be seen from overhead.
I only ever see them as part of clutches. I've seen some very small clutches of just 5-8 eggs, but never singles.

 

Until now, and now I've seen singles at least the last 3/4 of the look ins over the last 3 days(which is many, they sit right next to me).
And the egg pile/s are massive now compared to what i'm used to seeing with a spread of egg clutches to larva flowers.

Some of the look ins she has had one or two single eggs just stuck on her gaster at arbitrary spots. Like she was pumping em out so fast they just went where ever and some wound up stuck on her. Eventually a worker came and took them.

But the odds have changed too drastically on this, it's crazy. From two years of not seeing a lone egg, to now seeing one or two singles near her most of the time i go check in on em.
And this massive egg pile.

 

I bet alates are on the way. This is the 3rd "fresh start" egg pile I've seen, and it's way bigger than the first two which grew at a more steady rate.
So i'm a predict alates now on that sign.

[ANTdrew]

That’s a safe bet at this point.

[Full_Frontal_Yeti]

Still working on a new nest, but the brood is now everywhere. The queen continues to pump out eggs fast enough I see a single one from time to time, and anytime day or night it seems.
They keep brood now in all the water towers except the one right by the nest entrance. They almost never keep any brood in the chamber even tough it is a water tower and all the rest have plenty of brood on them.

 

Here’s the oldest nest, first one I made that worked. Need to dust it off badly.
This is the “bottom” of the nest where temps are  kept at 71/21f all the time. Except when the ambient gets hotter of course, no cooling. The queen used to live in this nest most of the time, but recently spent a while in the large first nest, and now has been in the middle nest for the last week.


 

The next two images are the middle nest also newest nest. It shares a little bit of heat cable with the “top” hottest nest, and has no temp probe in it. But with a surface IR temp reader I estimate average internal temps to be in the mid to high 70s.

There’s our Queen in her current chamber where she’s been for most of this week. She can be seen in the image of the first chamber too.

 

And here’s the “top” of the mound brood piles, using a temp probe/thermostat setup temps in here are in the mid to high 80s. I note that after the move they stopped using the dry hot chambers at the top of the nest. Which they used to keep late stage brood at. But now they keep them in this  watertower and only occasionally move some of the pupae over to the hottest chambers.

 

 

Whole setup. The new nest will push the middle nest back on the shelf filling the spot where it sits now. Connecting to it with those two ports we can see on the front face now. Images above are in proper order of nests/chambers going from left to right in the whole setup image here.

 

 

[Full_Frontal_Yeti]

Still no progress on the next nest. Two steps forward, two steps back and start over. And I need to get on the stick as we are thick with ants here these days. The little bits of paper wad in some images are a bit of paper-towel with some sunburst on it.

 

 

 

 

 

The brood pile is back to being a real pile and new groups of ants are waking up almost  daily again.
They have even started keeping some brood in the first chamber by the nest exit which they had not done until just recently seen here on the right.

 

Middle nest

And bottom nest.

 

 

However the real post here is about an unwanted guest that took up residence in the outworld. Now my 2nd one to have happened.
We let the cellar spiders live in the home around us normally. They typically stay up out of the way while removing other bugs, and we leave them alone. But this one had to be moved, though I did let them finish their meal before eviction.

 

[Full_Frontal_Yeti]

Finally got the nest done, and I still made mistakes. This one was the 4th and lacks the copper heat pipe that I just forgot to put in before the pour. I really should consider a check list, but that feels like work and I’m a slacker. I just whiffed one fully, then forgot to put magnets in one, then dropped one, after getting a glass cut for it.

So here now on the 4th one and they moved in ASAP, filling it with brood as I had and had not imagined.
These are phone imagines, I’ll rig up some better lighting and bust out the real camera soon for some beauty images with no heat cables.

Before:

This had to come apart, with the left nest off first, and then the middle one.
It was real stressful work as the colony is packed in there enough they just pour out of any hole I open like water, and the queen was currently in that last nest. So I needed to keep real close track of where she was to ensure she’d not A: fall out of the nest, or B: Get smooshed at a port hole when i’m trying to jam a tube into it. Fortunately she quickly moved into the next nest  over when I started to disturb the nest. And then again when I started to disturb the middle nest.
So the queen moved all the way into the first big nest and was still there this morning.


Here is the new nest.

I wanted to provide as much flat space as I could, seeing them want to spread feeding larvae out next to each other rather than kept in piles as the non-feeding larvae and pupae are. I also made this one shallower than the previous ones. i noticed the depth was just a couple mm too far awawy from my macro lense to focus on. You can spot a couple smoother/odd spots inside on the back left area. I had a little sand collapse and needed to enlarge the tunnel space a little.

And here it is in place


And just after getting it al hooked up:

 

Here is blurry bad shot from this morning: They have filled all the spaces in the new nest with brood. I had imagined they would use the water tower room, but not all the rest of ti too, including the hall ways.


Here is the full shot from this moring, you can see the other nest chambers far left and top,  where they used to keep brood have been mostly emptied. The first two chambers in the large first nest have also been mostly emptied of feeding brood now holding the eggs, tinyween larve still in flowers, and waking callows. And the pupae are in the big nest on a chamber right over the heat pipe back left side you can see the pile of white and yellow/orange.



Here in the largest nest where the queen moved to sense the remodeling, we can see both her and the serious pile of callows going on there. From just ecloased whitish yellow in the middle to all the light golden orange ones around the edge. I think they have reached a new production rate level. I assume we’ll see alates sometime this year out of them.

 

[Ernteameise]

I just love watching this colony grow.

You are doing a great job.

And they are really pretty.

[Full_Frontal_Yeti]

Here are a few nicer images of the setup with new nest on the good camera. I've removed the heat cabel from most of the nests for the pics.

 

Full setup with new nest in the middle looking busy. They quickly shrank from the other two nests to fill the middle one in within a day. They still use the other two but as seen they are far less busy/crowded than they used to be.

I've been giving them bits of papertowel wet with sunburst. They tear bits off and feed it to the some of the larvea.



The oldest nest, where a small handful of brood are still consistently kept.

 

The 3rd made double heat chambers which had been full of brood, now mostly empty.

 

The original large nest still acting as “top of the mound” first nest off the outworld. They move the brood pile back and forth during the day between the hottest parts in the back where the copper tube runs just under all those chambers. And the water towers  where they will stuff the whole pile into one chamber with just enough room for workers to fit between the glass and top of the pile.

 

 

 

And finally close ups of the new nest being put to serious use. I think I left the “halls” just a little bit too wide as they tend to store brood in them, while narrower halls won’t see brood or seeds left in them. I also think they like the smaller chambers that are about ½ or so as tall as the other nests I’ve made. I had noticed they like to lay the feeding larvae out flat next to each other not piled up. So this nest was made to maximize flat internal surface areas for them and they sure do put it to use.

 

 

 

 

A growth explosion is happening, you can see the number of callows from the last few days is crazy.