6 replies to this topic

[BrittonLS]

August 21 & 29, 2015

 

Caught several of these queens both August 21 and August 29. Fairly certain they were both the same species, but I may have to take a close look at the second flight to make sure. The first flight I ran out of test tubes, so I put a few of them grouped up. You should all know that this species it NOT polygynous. I found both test tubes that had 3 queens with 2 dead and 1 squirming around without any legs. So all the others got their own tubes! This is the species found in my ID thread here: http://www.formicult...015/#entry25839

 

A nice sight

Edited by BrittonLS, September 27 2015 - 9:24 AM.

[dspdrew]

That color looks really cool.

[BrittonLS]

Got my first workers out of my group of Pheidole. I happened to look while they were still callow even! More to come I'm sure.

 

[BrittonLS]

9/22/2015

 

Many of my Pheidole with plenty of workers now! Most of my test tubes are dried so I'm trying to move them into new ones. Working on making some farms for them to move into soon. I really should have made those sooner than now! But they should be alright in there so long as they don't wiggle their way out of the tin foil I've coupled them with. All in all, looking very good!

 

[antmaniac]

I find that Pheidole queen is very lazy to move once settled down, even when the workers and brood have moved to other chamber. As long as she does not sense immediate danger or get disturbed, she will remain in one spot. This makes them easy to keep I suppose.

[BrittonLS]

9/27/15

 

Looking very good so far. No one seems to want to move out of their tubes into new ones at all, but they still have a little bit of water in them so maybe that will change as it dries out more. I also put a test tube in a small out world i made to see how they do. Sadly the ones I had in my garage didn't seem to do well at all and about half of them were growing mold. It seems the ones I keep on my desk with the heating cable do a lot better, perhaps it gets too hot in the garage for them or the change in temperature from day to night disagrees with them. It's also a little strange, the workers seem to be a lot darker than the queens.

 

All my Pheidole with more than one queen all killed each other off, I don't know how these two managed to become friends.

Edited by BrittonLS, September 27 2015 - 9:24 AM.

[BrittonLS]

The colony most of these pictures are from didn't do so well. I think they probably didn't have enough water after I forced them out of their tube. So

 

I think I'll be leaving these guys in theirs until they decide to move out on their own. But they have gotten the first major out of all my Pheidole sp! Very exciting. My other Pheidole are doing well and actually one I thought was dead like two weeks ago and had given up on is still alive o.o I made sure they had food and water for sure. It looks like they are hanging out in the test tube not doing much, I'm wondering if they're thinking about hibernating? I don't see any wandering around, but I made a poor sand decision and I cannot see them walking around at all.