27 replies to this topic

[ANTdrew]

Maybe tap the tube periodically as well.

[FelixTheAnter]

Tapping has been working great to empty out the tube, I'd say less than 10% of the colony is left in there.

But even with my endless harassing in the outworld, queens are still insisting on being out there. I've even tried chasing them all into the opening of the tube with a brush, but it's not as easy as it sounds.

The nest has a spare entrance that's currently closed. I'm debating attaching a piece of tubing that's covered with talc powder on the inside, so things can fall into the nest but not climb back out. Collect all the queens and brood from the outworld and funnel them into the tube, effectively dropping them into the nest.

[ANTdrew]

Direct a gentle airflow into the outworld, and they will not treat it like a nest.

[FelixTheAnter]

Funny you say that, I just aimed a fan at them. I remember having to do the same thing with a Crematogaster colony I had. Fingers crossed it works!

[FelixTheAnter]

The colony is doing well, and has finally (mostly) moved into their nest. I caught another 20ish queens, so I think a safe guess is that there's around 150 queens in this colony. Eventually I'll try actually counting them in the nest.

I was battling the heat cable for a while. Having used cable clips to hold it to the plexiglass wasn't working, because it wasn't coming in direct contact with the glass, which caused a lot of heat loss. Full_Frontal_Yeti suggested using adhesive putty (often known as Blu Tack) and that has been working really well!



Eventually I'll get around to removing the cable clips. It's a hassle so, I'm putting it off haha

It's awesome to finally be able to get a good view of them!

There is one queen that shed all except one of her wings:



Most of the brood that this colony has is pupae, which would explain why they aren't super interested in protein at the moment.


They lost probably several hundred eggs (sounds like a lot, but with a colony this size will be very quickly replaced) because of their downright refusal to move them into the nest.

When I had to transfer them out of their test tubes, I used a soft brush to remove as much of the stuck brood as I could, then I gave the tubes to my smaller (20 queen) colony of the same species. They've actually been super helpful, because they'll quickly collect all the brood then more or less abandon the tubes. I ended up giving them this tube after the big colony had removed perhaps half of the brood that you see here. After that, they decided the rest were staying there and they would NOT be convinced to leave.



So I flicked out all the workers and gave the tube to the smaller colony. The next morning the tube was empty!

The smaller colony is hard at work to feed all their brood, they're absolutely demolishing egg yolk.


The bigger colony still has plenty of brood to care for, and are already building up some nice piles of eggs. If you look closely you can also see a couple small larvae with bright yellow egg-yolk stomachs!




There's still a bit of nesting going on in the hidden entrance to the outworld, and in the section of the tube directly attached to their nest. But whatever, it's not worth fighting them over it!

I'm excited to see how this colony develops now that the stress of moving is done.

[ANTdrew]

This is not my favorite genus, but this is a cool setup and nice looking mega-colony. You have more queens than the average colony on here has workers! Lol

[FelixTheAnter]

I never thought about that, that's hilarious!

This species certainly wouldn't have been my pick if I was buying a starter colony, I'm a bit more into exotic or weird/colorful/unique species. But any massive colony is more than "cool enough" for me, so I'm very happy haha

[FelixTheAnter]

It's safe to sat that the girls have finally fully settled into their new home, and then number of eggs being laid is insane!!

This was on the 4th:


And this is today, just 3 days later!


They are completely unbothered by light, even with my phone flashlight just 1cm from the nest. Took some time tonight to use both mine and my partners phone to get some nice close-ups.

Three separate areas in the nest dedicated to eggs at the moment.


On the right side you can see the queen who still has one of her 4 wings. I love being able to recognize an individual like this.




And here's some close ups! Managed to capture a queen feeding a larvae:


And some others. If you look closely you can see a bunch of the larvae have bright yellow stomachs, because the main source of protein the colony has gotten this week is egg yolk.



They're wasting no time catching up on brood-production. Not sure if they'll always produce this fast, or if they're working extra hard now because they lost a lot of brood during the move to the nest (as mentioned before, because of their own refusal to move the brood to the nest).

Regardless, I'm super excited! They're finally starting to show much more interest in protein, and probably drinking about 1ml of sugar water each day.

Still haven't peeled the adhesive/cable clips off the front of the nest yet. So much effort, more than I want to put in right now lol

The adhesive putty is working perfectly to hold the cable to the front of the plexiglass.

I'm very glad that I made the decision to silicone the plexiglass to the next, because the heat gradient has definitely caused it to bow out a bit. As you can see in the previous photos, they can actually walk between the plexi and the "outer" painted portion of the nest in some places. They're using that to their advantage, they think it's perfect for being able to shove their babies directly up against the heat cable. I have never seen a species that likes things THIS warm, it's pretty cool to see.

The nest is a bit too big for them at the moment, I overestimated how much space they'd need. (Keep in mind a significant percentage of the workers are hidden behind the brood against the plexiglass here):


But with how much brood they have, I'm not at all worried about the excess space. In fact, I'm more thinking that I should start building a second/satellite nest soon, so that whenever they fill this one, I have another ready to go.

My local hardware store sells HUGE ytong blocks, probably 2.5 - 3x the size of this nest. They also sell massive sheets of plexiglass. Sooo however big this colony gets, it shouldn't be too difficult to accommodate them! I can't wait to see them grow.

Edited by FelixTheAnter, Yesterday, 1:36 PM.