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Post by TenebrousNova on Apr 6, 2018 16:23:41 GMT
I decided to try again with this species, having previously purchased a xiangban queen who sadly kept eating her own eggs and never got to start a colony. This colony that arrived this morning has one big queen, seven workers, three medium sized larvae and a nice sized ball of eggs. I purchased this colony from British Ants and I'm also hoping to order another colony from Antsrus when they're in stock. I'm hoping that I'll have better odds with queens that already have workers. Couldn't get a good photo of the queen, but here she is: The workers are just as hairy as their mother. They are also, as I soon discovered, deceptively fast. The worker on the right is licking up the last bit of honey water I gave them. They've drank two little droplets of it. I then opened the test tube again to give them a small dead cricket, but before I could react five of seven workers shot straight out and ran everywhere! It gave me an opportunity to test the aspirator I'd purchased ages ago from Ant House, which was invaluable in retrieving these badly behaved ants. The colony has settled back down and I'm hoping they'll decide to eat that cricket later. For now, I'm keeping them in a warm and dark corner of my ant cupboard.
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Post by Wood~Ant on Apr 6, 2018 20:53:34 GMT
At least your colony has brood, as the queen of mine never laid more than 2 eggs even though my colony had 11 workers. Hope yours do well as they are a lovely species.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Apr 7, 2018 17:06:38 GMT
The colony seems to be alright today, although they are very quick to react to disturbances, especially the queen who seems to hate light in particular. I limited my inspection of them to a few minutes with this in mind. I did manage to get some nice photos of the xiangban queen to try and show off her lovely markings. There's also some red underneath. The workers took a bit more honey. No escapes this time! And here's the brood. The larvae seem quite wrinkly compared to those of other species I've seen. They are placed next to a few severed cricket legs so hopefully they're feeding? "Wait, what about me?" Chip being nosy as usual, he has a habit of trying to get my attention when I'm concentrating on photos! Apparently xiangban refers to the smell of the ants, which is supposed to be quite distinctive. I have no intention of sticking my nose near them, however!
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Post by TenebrousNova on Apr 15, 2018 10:06:15 GMT
At the moment I only see one egg. Hopefully they're just being hidden, but I'm worried they might've been eaten.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Apr 20, 2018 13:24:52 GMT
The queen has laid a ball of eggs, but all three larvae are missing, presumably eaten. What a massive waste. I'm at a loss here. I'm wondering if I should try moving them into something else because my Asian ants never did well in test tubes.
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Post by TenebrousNova on May 3, 2018 22:13:35 GMT
I checked this colony earlier and they seem to be alright. There's still plenty of eggs- I estimate around fifteen- and I'm hoping they'll start to hatch before long. The trouble is going to be feeding them, as they seem to ignore insects. I might take a leaf out of Shane's book and try a mostly fruit diet.
As noted before, the queen is prone to panicking so I've been limiting observation to a minute a week. I don't want to give her an excuse to eat any new larvae like she did last time!
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Post by Wood~Ant on May 4, 2018 7:41:53 GMT
I have found that mine will eat small flies freshly killed in our garden, but totally ignore larger insect prey such as crickets and house flies. Even small spiders go uneaten, and so far honey water is only drunk in small quantities. Haven't tried fruit yet, but wish my queen would lay more eggs and brood development was faster in this species.
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shane
Ant Photographer
Ant Species Image Gatherer
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Post by shane on May 4, 2018 13:31:40 GMT
Mine have to with eaten there larvae, I just checked today, There ball of eggs are around 18, and my queen seems to love to sleep.
I am thinking of just having test tube in foraging arena till colony gets bigger.
Mine still eat honey water and protean fruit and have some kitchen roll down for the older workers.
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Post by TenebrousNova on May 24, 2018 17:50:41 GMT
Got a pleasant surprise just now when I found that one of the eggs has hatched into a tiny larva. A few days ago I moved the colony into a larger test tube as the older one's water was almost completely dried up. I've given them a cricket and although my queen is the opposite of Shane's and ran away from it, the workers are drinking fluids from the body.
The queen still looks very fat so she would appear to be healthy enough. None of the workers have died so far.
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Post by TenebrousNova on May 30, 2018 16:26:18 GMT
There appears to be a few more eggs now and I think an additional larva has hatched, but I didn't look long enough to confirm. The first larva has already started to grow a little though!
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Post by TenebrousNova on Jun 12, 2018 10:28:23 GMT
There's still only one larva and what looks like the same amount of eggs as usual. One of the workers looks like she's dying, but the larva is almost big enough to pupate.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Jun 15, 2018 14:36:00 GMT
I can distinctly see two newborn larvae at last! Hopefully they won't be eaten. The colony is a bit calmer than they used to be, especially the queen who used to charge around in a frenzied panic as soon as the test tube moved.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Jun 15, 2018 20:23:23 GMT
Here's a photo of the brood so far. You can see the newborn larvae at the bottom right of the egg pile.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Jun 21, 2018 14:29:43 GMT
There's about five new larvae and they've definitely started to grow a bit. It's hard to count them accurately because they're stuck to the egg ball and the workers move them around as soon as I check on the colony. Unless it becomes a major, I don't think it'll be long until the eldest larva pupates.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Jun 25, 2018 11:51:13 GMT
There's currently about ten larvae and they're growing quickly. The oldest one has started to turn an opaque white, which should mean it'll pupate before long?
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