7 replies to this topic

[cooIboyJ]

I have caught some queens of the species and genus Nylanderia vividula and put them in a shoebox with a heat cable. I hope these 5 queens are successful because I have never kept them successfully. 

[ANTdrew]

This is an incredibly underrated species. They are very rewarding to keep.

[cooIboyJ]

I checked on my ants yesterday and took some pictures. Most of the queens have an egg pile, but one has scattered her eggs. One has died although now that I look at it, I think it might've been a male. None of the queens have larvae yet.

These are all my ants in their shoebox right now.

Edited by cooIboyJ, September 14 2025 - 8:39 AM.

[cooIboyJ]

Not many of the queens are doing too well; one of the queens has 1 egg, another has eggs scattered all over the test tube, and the others (besides the last one) don't have any eggs at all. The last one has a nice small egg pile, which I managed to get a close up of.

[cooIboyJ]

The queen I talked about in the last post has had her egg pile almost double, and two others now have small egg piles! In some of the pics you can see the queen holding an egg. (only got pics of two of the three with eggs).

 

[cooIboyJ]

The queens are doing extremely well, with huge egg piles. I think they might have larvae but it is hard to see.

 

Pics:

[cooIboyJ]

These ants are doing very well, with lots of larvae. I will be really excited when these ants get workers, as last year I tried keeping them, but they never got past the egg stage because I didn't have a heat cable.

 

EDIT- I also need to know if I should hibernate these ants, and when, as I heard you should hibernate them as long as there is snow on the floor, and it only snow flurries here a little bit sometimes.

Edited by cooIboyJ, October 13 2025 - 10:14 AM.

[ANTdrew]

I always hibernated mine. I bet just leaving them at room temp over the winter for a bit of a slow down would probably be sufficient, though.