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Post by TenebrousNova on Dec 4, 2018 20:09:45 GMT
Welcome, Worker #35!
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Post by TenebrousNova on Jan 27, 2019 17:37:46 GMT
I just did a head count of this colony. To my surprise, there are now 41 workers. The colony has grown more than I expected during the Winter period! No more eggs at the moment, however. The queen is still much jumpier than my other Camponotus queens but today she didn't seem to mind the inspection so much.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Mar 7, 2019 13:29:08 GMT
The colony has now begun to accept an increasing amount of food. During the Winter they've always been happy to accept sugar water but now they're enthusiastically taking insects. The queen has laid a small clutch of eggs and the larvae are beginning to grow. Three of them have now pupated.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Mar 19, 2019 17:09:44 GMT
At the moment there's plenty of larvae and several cocooned pupae. The egg pile seems to go up and down, but hopefully they're just getting moved out of my sight (Or better yet, hatching) and not getting eaten.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Mar 27, 2019 19:34:34 GMT
The xiangban queen has given me a pleasant surprise today by laying a new clutch of eggs. The larvae are growing very quickly. There's over ten pupae now. More eggs:
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Post by TenebrousNova on Apr 10, 2019 16:01:39 GMT
The queen is still laying eggs and there must be nearly 20 cocoons now. If things keep going well the colony will surpass 60 workers in the next few months and perhaps even their first hundred this year. They've taken a young locust into the nest and almost entirely eaten it already. Here's the queen. I've noticed that occasionally when I check the colony and the queen gets startled, she excretes a small droplet of clear fluid that I'm guessing is the ant equivalent of urine? I hope I'm not causing her majesty to wet herself: View of the main brood chamber, which is filled with eggs, larvae and cocooned pupae: In a separate chamber, the workers are tending to several older larvae that look like they'll pupate soon.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Apr 16, 2019 15:11:26 GMT
Here's a xiangban worker locked in fierce combat with a dead young locust. I would like to provide more photos of the workers going foraging but they always know when I have the lid open and soon come running up. The older larvae I showed in the last update seem to be getting a pink hue. Here's the main brood chamber. You can just about see a dark cocoon at the top, which could be the first new worker of the year. Already the eggs are starting to hatch. Still no sign of any major larvae yet but they should be appearing at this point. Maybe a few of the new eggs or hatchling larvae will become majors?
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Post by TenebrousNova on Apr 20, 2019 17:53:05 GMT
The first five callows of the year have eclosed, making 45 workers in total! There's still another 20-30 cocoons to go.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Apr 21, 2019 15:10:30 GMT
Here's one of the five newcomers. There's two more cocoons that're very close to eclosing so there should be even more workers in the next few days. The cricket that I gave them less than a day ago has been almost completely devoured already. I'd say that next to the C. mitis and C. nicobarensis, this is currently my third fastest growing Camponotus colony. On another note, when I submitted one of my earlier photos to Reddit I was told that "xiangban" is not the true name of their species and that they're actually a subspecies of Camponotus wassmanni, which is very similar but without the red markings: Therefore, their real species name is Camponotus wassmanni mutilarius. But I'm accustomed to calling them C. xiangban so I don't know if I'd end up using their proper name.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Apr 24, 2019 18:57:17 GMT
I checked the colony just in time to see Worker #48 being welcomed into the world. They're also feasting heartily on a large cricket. They go through small ones so quickly that I think it's a good idea to start giving them bigger prey.
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Post by TenebrousNova on May 7, 2019 14:21:00 GMT
Here is the egg pile today. There are currently 49 workers. I'm also delighted to see that Wood's colony is starting to recover.
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Post by TenebrousNova on May 8, 2019 18:58:24 GMT
Today marks an important milestone in this colony's history, because the 50th and 51st workers have now eclosed. More cocoons are darkening and the larvae are growing quickly.
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Post by TenebrousNova on May 15, 2019 17:32:58 GMT
The egg pile has grown a little despite new larvae hatching often. Today there are 56 workers.
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Post by TenebrousNova on May 21, 2019 19:51:45 GMT
There are now 60 workers!
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Post by TenebrousNova on May 27, 2019 14:38:04 GMT
One worker has died of old age, but there's now 64 workers. There was an accidental outbreak of fruitflies that escaped their tub and got everywhere, so I had to catch as many as possible and feed them to my ants. The xiangban in particular seemed to enjoy them and it was funny watching the workers running around trying to catch them. The brood pile is currently more or less the same size as it was before with a mixture of all stages of development.
It's lovely to see that the colony has doubled in size since the Winter already.
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