<IceWhyte> Queen Latifah - Messor barbarus

[IceWhyte]

I recieved a newly mated queen from Bobdol about 3 weeks ago. I have kept her warm and covered up most of the time. I am aware she has one egg at least but there may be some in the wool. I am going to start using the heat mat now too to get her warmer an hopefully produce more eggs. Will check next week and update.

*I am very interested to hear comments and advice from other members but could you please put you comments in the seperate comments topic*

Please post journal comments on here.

[IceWhyte]

I have received a heat rock which I placed in the set up along with the queen. I also purchased a digital thermometer which has a probe on the end of a cable. Using this I can get an accurate reading of the temperature where the queen is by placing the probe next to the test tube.



From this picture you can see the brown heat rock next to the box which the queen is in. The digital display at the top shows the temperature of the probe which is next to the test tube in the box.

The heat rock seems to heat the tank up to between 24-26 degrees so this temperature should hopefully encourage some egg laying. My flat gets rather cold at night so the temp was dropping to 17-18 degrees in the tank so felt like I had to take action.

[IceWhyte]

I just checked the queen and I can now see that she has a bunch of eggs. I couldn't see exactly but looked around 10 eggs. It appears that the extra heat is doing her well. I was slightly concerned however as the cotton wool between the queen and water reservoir is going slightly blue. I am guessing this is a light mould so I will check her again in a few days and consider moving her into a new tube.

[IceWhyte]

I have now placed the queen and her eggs in a new clean test tube as the other one was developing mould on the cotton wool. The eggs look slightly bigger and there looks to be around 10 but it is hard to tell.

I placed a couple of dandelion seeds, a finch seed and a small bit of apefonda in the new tube for the queen. I need to get hold of some more apefonda as every ant I have seen go near it will be interested.

Yesterday I also made a small enclosure for the barbs, I will use this as a stepping stone between the test tube set up and the ytong set up. See below.



Once the first worker encloses, I will place the test tube in this enclosure, remove the cotton wool and block the test tube off with sand. I think this will be more natural for the colony because when the workers decide that they want to forage for food they can do so by removing some sand.

[IceWhyte]

Just had a quick check on the queen there. The eggs have grown into a big bundle, not sure if its more eggs or if its just because the original eggs have got bigger. She has eaten the Apefonda that I placed in but hasn't eaten any seeds, although she has moved them to the dry end of the test tube so they don't germinate.

[IceWhyte]

Just done my weekly check and was pleased to find that she las laid more eggs and there appears to be some small larvae now. I tried to count but didn't want to disturb her anymore but there was about 15-20 eggs and 5-10 small larvae.

[IceWhyte]

Weekly update.

I have been using a hot water bottle to give the tank an extra bit of heat in the hope that more eggs would be laid. It seems to have done her good as she has laid another batch, this brings the count to around 40 eggs and 7 medium sized larvae.

She seemed to get really stressed when I checked her (for about 20 seconds) so I think I will leave it at least 2 weeks before I check again.

[IceWhyte]

After 2 weeks I have just checked my queen to see that the brood is coming on nicely. There is one pupae, 4 larvae which is nearly at pupae stage, a large pile of tiny larvae and a small batch of eggs. See below.







I put in a dead fruit fly to see if she would eat it or feed it to the larvae.

[IceWhyte]

When I put the fly in the test tube on thursday night the queen seemed to get very stressed so I thought I better have a look today to see if she was calm. When I uncovered the test tube I could see she had a tiny piece of the fly in her mouth so herself or the larvae must have eaten the rest already.

Since they ate the last fly so quick I put another one in, hopefully this will speed up the growth of the vast amount of larvae.

[IceWhyte]

There is now 7 pupae, all different sizes, there are some that are fairly big and some tiny ones. There is still about 15 larvae and a good sized batch of eggs.

The flies I put in last week have been eaten, just a small pile of wings remain. It looks like the dandelion seeds I put in have been eaten too.

I never put any more food in because I didn't want to stress the queen out so I will maybe wait until some workers enclose before I clean out the test tube and give them more food.

[IceWhyte]

I am going to be a way from my flat next week as I have a training event for my summer job, so today I had a look to see how the queen was doing.

As you can see from the picture there are 3 pupae which are going that yellow/brown colour which means that they are going to enclose soon. Seems kind of strange how she has moved the pupae over to the rubbish pile but I am going to assume that is to keep them separate from the hungry larvae. So looks like I may miss my first workers adding to the colony but at least it will be a pleasANT suprise next weekend when I get back to the flat.



Also, it looks like I am going to have to change the test tube as the cotton is starting to go mouldy again.

[IceWhyte]

Well 6 days ago I had no workers, 3 pupae and piles of larvae/eggs. I now have 3 workers, 8 pupae and still piles of eggs/larvae.



This brood is developing so fast and the queen doesn't want to stop laying eggs at all.

I have put a couple of flies in for them to eat just now but I intent to put them in the small set up I created pretty soon.

[IceWhyte]

Just had a wee check on the ants in their new home.
They seem to be pretty calm and relaxed. There is still a huge amount of brood. I expected there to be another couple of workers by now as there was well browned pupae the previous time I checked but I noticed that there was two dead ants outside the test tube, one was still in pupae form and the other was an adult (a much larger adult than the others). You can see from the picture that I have circled them.



Here is another couple of pictures showing the brood.





If anyone knows why these ants may have died, I would be interested to hear from you.

[IceWhyte]

Not checked on the ants today but thought I would do an entry on all the other stuff relating to my Messor colony.
Here is what their test tube is in just now, ferrero roche box:





Covered by a small box that keeps them dark:


This is the enclosure I will keep them in at my parents place, it has a 5w heat mat in it so should keep the temperature at around 24-25 degrees:



Worker that died, she had a bigger head than the others(not really in focus):


The new cover for the tank, thermal blanket. Before anyone says anything, Sandeel copied me on this one
It seems to work pretty well though:


Oh and the new fruit fly culture is coming on well:

[IceWhyte]

My room at my parents house is a lot hotter than I remember or maybe it is because the brilliant weather we are getting here, I am totally sun burnt from today (that says it all).
Well anyway because the temperature is so hot during the day and freezing at night I have bought a thermostat and fitted it in the set up. There are now 5 workers and still several pupae, it seems a lot of the other brood have gone so I assume the larvae ate some eggs.
The set up is hard to describe but as you can see in the picture I have a large enclosure which has a heat mat in it and inside that there is a smaller tub which has the ants in. Inside the smaller tub there is two probes, one for the thermostat and one for the digital thermometer.
I noticed there is a slight bit of mould on the cotton in the ants test tube so I have created a new test tube set up and placed it in the enclosure so they can choose to stay there if the mould gets too much for them.
I went out and picked some fresh dandelion seeds but I have only seen the largest worker (who forages) take in large grass seeds.