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Post by TenebrousNova on Jul 11, 2017 11:33:41 GMT
This is the second time I've tried to keep this species, I believe! I bought a lovely colony from Jeoff82, who sent them out yesterday. They arrived today, which is possibly the fastest ant delivery I've ever had. Well packaged, too! This colony is wild-caught and consists of two queens, several workers and a mountain of pupae. A few workers are actually buried under the cocoons so I'm going to get them into a larger set up as soon as possible. This species is just as skittish as I remember so getting good photos has proven difficult so far. I might order another Anthouse.es formicarium, which has worked well for my Pheidole pallidula so far. Here's one of the queens.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Jul 11, 2017 19:57:58 GMT
No fewer than three callow workers have eclosed since the colony's arrival. At the moment they reside in a small and bare tank which will be their home until the formicarium from Anthouse turns up (I hope it doesn't take as long as last time). I ordered a large acrylic nest this time. The workers have been quick to clear all the rubbish out of their test tube. Sometimes they randomly take several cocoons out and leave them in a corner of the tank before coming back for them later. Neither of the queens have approached the open end of the test tube. The workers love honey and have had three droplets of it today, which they drank up very quickly.
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Post by jeoff82 on Jul 11, 2017 20:19:47 GMT
Sounds like they doing well. I cannot get over how big that worker is next to the queen. Where I get these colonies from are some nests with very large workers inside, sometimes its surprising to see them. Did you manage to count the cocoons?
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Post by TenebrousNova on Jul 11, 2017 20:54:32 GMT
Sounds like they doing well. I cannot get over how big that worker is next to the queen. Where I get these colonies from are some nests with very large workers inside, sometimes its surprising to see them. Did you manage to count the cocoons? Afraid not! The cocoons are constantly being jostled and moved around but I'd say there's around 80 like you estimated. It appears that this colony isn't particularly aggressive at all. My smaller colony that I originally had a few years ago was pretty vicious and the workers would immediately pinch you as soon as they saw your fingers. These ones might run up your fingers but they don't bite. Here's a closeup of one of the callows. The callows have only been walking around for a few hours, but walk they do. Whilst Messor callows almost seem to lay around after eclosing, the new Formica additions are already running around and helping their older sisters.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Jul 11, 2017 23:02:14 GMT
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Post by TenebrousNova on Jul 12, 2017 12:34:01 GMT
At least 5 more callows have joined this colony today! It's starting to look very busy already.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Jul 14, 2017 14:52:28 GMT
The acrylic nest arrived and much sooner than I expected! I assumed that the brood was all pupae so I tapped the colony out into the foraging area. I was wrong, as I spotted at least nine eggs amongst the cocoons. The move was swift. Once the pupae were situated within the nest, the queens were dragged by their jaws until they were also inside. Workers who seemed lost were also bodily carried in. I'm glad I ordered the large sized nest since the pupae fill an entire chamber. Here's the smaller queen having a nap: Larger queen: Worker carrying eggs: They seem settled in already.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Jul 15, 2017 14:35:22 GMT
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Post by TenebrousNova on Jan 31, 2018 19:05:18 GMT
All of this colony's cocoons became adults months ago, but I suspect they ate the eggs in that last update since there were never signs of developing larvae in the nest. They are fairly active and give me a lot of trouble when I open the lid to give them food. Hopefully the queens will begin laying eggs in spring.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Feb 27, 2018 17:43:38 GMT
I had given this colony a little bit of pastry last night so I assumed the pale thing I noticed them holding just now was that. Nope, it's a pile of eggs! Apologies for the poor photo quality, these girls are pretty messy and have made it difficult to focus into their nest. I also managed to get a photo of the smaller queen before she could flee from the light. And here's some very fat workers milling around in a chamber. If anything kills them, it won't be starvation.
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Post by jeoff82 on Feb 27, 2018 20:39:26 GMT
Glad these are still going strong. Ill have to check on my fusca colonies and see if I have eggs yet. Keep them warm and dark and they should do good this year.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Mar 12, 2018 21:17:15 GMT
More eggs have been laid and to my surprise, some of them have already hatched into larvae that are rapidly growing. I forgot how fast the brood of this species develops.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Mar 18, 2018 17:40:17 GMT
Some of the larvae are already halfway grown and more are hatching all the time. It seems that eggs are still being laid. Consequently, the colony has been eating a lot of crickets lately. I would provide photos but the brood blends in very well with the now dirty interior of their nest. Messy girls.
Occasionally one or both of the queens visit the foraging area, but they soon run off at the first sign of disturbances. I suppose polygynous ants don't need to worry so much about their queens, so they're given a certain amount of liberty. Still, a worker found the smaller queen alone in a chamber the other day and immediately dragged her by the jaws into the one the other queen was in. Funny to watch!
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Post by TenebrousNova on Mar 22, 2018 19:09:58 GMT
Surprisingly, there's already several cocooned pupae in the nest. It's been less than a month! The workers have filled one chamber with bits of torn cotton, which they've been placing over the mature larvae so they can spin their cocoons undisturbed. The cocoons are smaller than the original ones that Jeoff sent with the queens, which were taken from a wild nest. I'm not sure if this is because the queens were (I think) from last year's nuptial flights or because they're not getting as much food as the wild colony would. I doubt it's the latter because I already feed this colony a great deal.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Apr 7, 2018 10:09:46 GMT
It's been a while since I last posted photos of this colony. Here's the smaller queen walking around the foraging box. They often bring their brood out there and put them on their food tray for some reason. This is about half of the brood in the nest, I would get a photo of the main brood chamber but there's always condensation in it. I haven't seen any new eggs lately but I have noticed there's a great deal of bare pupae. Wonder why that is? Here's the bigger queen with the brood.
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