26 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