Massive Flavus Flights

[Wood~Ant]

The Lasius flavus just outside our home are flying in their thousands. They began about 20 minutes ago, and as I had the TV on we might have missed them had it not been for my seeing so many yellow flying bodies going past our lounge window.
Jenant is still out there picking up newly mated queens as fast as she can before they vanish, and so are Myrmica rubra workers foraging to pick up any damaged ants or those just removing their wings.

It is a spectacular sight to see so many flavus nests pouring out their alates, but being smaller than L. niger queens this species is not so easy to collect unless you have very nimble fingers. 

[Wood~Ant]

Three of the mated flavus queens that Jenant collected sadly died, which was probably my fault as I didn't bung the cotton wool in tight enough on the water end of the test tubes. This still leaves about 14 alive, which I have paired off as I find the young queens of this Lasius species are very good at founding a colony with more than 1 queen and are not aggressive to one another like L. niger queens can be.

Now we shall keep them under observation for a few weeks to see how many eggs they lay, and how well these newly mated young queens do at founding a dynasty. 

[Wood~Ant]

Nice to see today that some of these newly mated queens have laid several eggs. I will keep them in test tubes as they like the moisture and seem happy enough to raise their first workers in these.
It is perhaps best to keep these ants in soil taken from the wild or a garden, as having tried keeping this species in a more sterile compost does not give them the type of environment they live in normally, as untreated soil contains small invertebrates which they would normally feed on.

I have found they will happily live in an upright Ant World set up, but don't like sand or peat, or any type of packaged compost you get from garden centres. As ants live in what I might consider very poor soil in the wild, it is evident that they are happy with it from their point of view. 

[baggers]

So lucky I have yet to see anything :-(

[Wood~Ant]

Aug 17, 2013 19:18:10 GMT baggers said:

So lucky I have yet to see anything :-(

There may be some more if we have another heatwave, but most nests fly in July here in the south.

[baggers]

Yeah thought it was maybe not the right terrain for them round my way, unless they are just very late around here. Oh we'll here's hoping I not been blind to it.