Post by sapsey on Jul 9, 2013 14:03:34 GMT
Hi everyone,
This is my first ever journal and first time keeping ants so please bare with me! If you have any constructive advice please feel free to post it to this journal.
I purchased my L Niger colony through the Ant Store in Germany on the 19/06/13. I ordered 1xQueen with 10xWorkers they all arrived well packaged and safe. I was surprised to find x5Pupae and a batch of small white eggs all laid nicely on the cotton wall inside the test tube.
I house my colony in a Chaos nest with a Multi-form foraging area bought from Tar Heel Ants in America. This is a very cool set-up but you do obviously have to wait a lot longer for delivery than if you ordered closer to home (I live in the UK). I house my set-up in my bedroom so the colony is kept at room temperature.
My ants settled in very quickly to their new home with me witnessing the birth of my first Worker in their new home on the 29/06/13 (was very cool to see a white ant
). They came straight out to explore their new surroundings and I would say they are not a shy ant with my Workers regularly out day or night. Since then my population has grown from 10 Workers to 15 workers (as of todays date 09/07/13). I have a large pile of 12 Pupae stored in my nest tended to by 3 workers whilst my Queen who is still in the test tube (I placed this in the foraging area) has 3 piles of eggs and a lot of Larvae all of different sizes. Interestingly my ants have split in half with the Queen, eggs and Larvae in the test tube and 3Workers and 12 Pupae in the nest area. I am hoping the Queen will follow shortly with my whole colony then being in the nest area.
I have tried my ants on a number of food items but what seems to work well for me is the good old sugar honey mix and meal worms. They also loved the spider I placed in the foraging area, this was dismembered very quickly and fed to the large Larvae pile.
I think that is everything I wanted to place in my first journal. Watch out for the next up date.
Rich.
This is my first ever journal and first time keeping ants so please bare with me! If you have any constructive advice please feel free to post it to this journal.
I purchased my L Niger colony through the Ant Store in Germany on the 19/06/13. I ordered 1xQueen with 10xWorkers they all arrived well packaged and safe. I was surprised to find x5Pupae and a batch of small white eggs all laid nicely on the cotton wall inside the test tube.
I house my colony in a Chaos nest with a Multi-form foraging area bought from Tar Heel Ants in America. This is a very cool set-up but you do obviously have to wait a lot longer for delivery than if you ordered closer to home (I live in the UK). I house my set-up in my bedroom so the colony is kept at room temperature.
My ants settled in very quickly to their new home with me witnessing the birth of my first Worker in their new home on the 29/06/13 (was very cool to see a white ant
). They came straight out to explore their new surroundings and I would say they are not a shy ant with my Workers regularly out day or night. Since then my population has grown from 10 Workers to 15 workers (as of todays date 09/07/13). I have a large pile of 12 Pupae stored in my nest tended to by 3 workers whilst my Queen who is still in the test tube (I placed this in the foraging area) has 3 piles of eggs and a lot of Larvae all of different sizes. Interestingly my ants have split in half with the Queen, eggs and Larvae in the test tube and 3Workers and 12 Pupae in the nest area. I am hoping the Queen will follow shortly with my whole colony then being in the nest area.I have tried my ants on a number of food items but what seems to work well for me is the good old sugar honey mix and meal worms. They also loved the spider I placed in the foraging area, this was dismembered very quickly and fed to the large Larvae pile.
I think that is everything I wanted to place in my first journal. Watch out for the next up date.
Rich.
very interesting behaviour to witness. Would be interesting to see if anyone else has had this sort of behaviour happen.
. I am still awaiting my nest and foraging area so have now transferred them to a new fresh test tube.
