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Post by TenebrousNova on Jun 13, 2017 11:30:08 GMT
At last, the nest has arrived! It should've arrived yesterday but by the time I reached the door, the courier was long gone. They literally wait a few seconds and then leave, so I spent a few hours on watch this morning and caught him in time. The nest is very nice! I like the design of it. Unfortunately the foraging area was too small to accommodate the test tube, so I didn't have the luxury of leaving it in there for them to move out on their own. I had to speed things up a little. I made sure to wet the sponges first. I removed the tissue paper from the test tube, which as it turns out the queen was hiding inside. When she emerged, I gently prodded her in the direction of the nest entrance, which she darted inside. Predictably, the rest of the colony soon followed her! So far the colony is still very tentatively exploring the second chamber. They're mostly staying with their queen and brood right now, but they seem to fit very comfortably in this nest with lots of growing room.
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Post by Wood~Ant on Jun 13, 2017 13:11:59 GMT
TenebrousNova, you will find the foraging box has a plastic film covering the sides and the top. This is easily removed with strong finger nails and just peel it off, as it will give you a nice clear view of foraging ants.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Jun 13, 2017 13:42:09 GMT
TenebrousNova , you will find the foraging box has a plastic film covering the sides and the top. This is easily removed with strong finger nails and just peel it off, as it will give you a nice clear view of foraging ants. So it does! Thanks Wood. They're tucking into a fly right now.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Jun 13, 2017 22:56:58 GMT
The flies I gave this colony have been devoured. Tonight they have half a cricket, which should last them longer. The colony has fully explored their nest and move through all the chambers with purpose. The queen has moved and is now ensconced within one of the deeper chambers. The larvae are looking very well fed.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Jun 17, 2017 12:03:00 GMT
The colony has devoured a small locust and cricket over the last few days. I can see an enormous larva that is almost certainly a soldier in the brood chamber as well as a soldier pupa. The queen has also been laying a big pile of eggs!
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Post by TenebrousNova on Jun 17, 2017 19:23:38 GMT
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Post by TenebrousNova on Jun 20, 2017 13:46:10 GMT
The colony continues to grow. There's quite a lot of callows walking around right now, including a pale soldier. They seem to love fruit flies and had eight of them yesterday. They're munching on several right now. The main issue I have is that the colony is messy and has let a few chambers get very dirty already. They dragged a locust into the nest a few days ago, but left it to decay and never ate or removed it... I can see a single soldier pupa and two soldier larvae right now, which is nice to see. I noticed that the largest soldiers always stay inside the nest close to the queen and follow her around rather than venture out into the foraging area. When the Pheidole finds live prey outside though, the smallest soldiers do participate when it comes to subduing and bringing it in. I do enjoy watching foragers return to the nest with news of food, then there's suddenly a river of Pheidole surging out to find it. Here's the queen. She left her favourite chamber, chaperoned by soldiers and took a walk around the adjoining one to inspect the fruit flies that her workers have brought in. Amusingly, the nurses immediately started bringing the brood out into that chamber, perhaps assuming she was going to stay there instead. Minutes later the queen returned to her usual spot with the nurses scrambling to return the brood.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Jul 8, 2017 23:22:16 GMT
This colony is still doing excellently and is fed daily with either several fruit flies or a cricket. Or sometimes even both, they manage to devour it regardless. As you can see, there's a great deal of brood in there right now. The queen's chamber contains a big mound of both worker and soldier pupae which the queen usually stays behind, the younger larvae and loads of eggs. The older larvae seem to be kept in the adjacent chambers. Right now there's a few soldier callows walking around and I see several worker callows each day. When the Lasius niger nuptial flight occurred a few days ago, I found a few dead dewinged queens and gave them to the Pheidole. Needless to say, they loved this treat. I can't promise it to them very often, of course.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Jul 10, 2017 15:18:02 GMT
Here's the egg pile today! As you can see, there's also a lot of newborn larvae. This is a worker feeding a larva. It looks like she's inflating a balloon, haha! Some of the pupae in the pile. Soldier larva.
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andavane
Nurse Ant
Posts: 99
Country: UK
Favourite Ant: All Messor spp, Lasius niger, L flavus, Pheidole palidula
I Like: Peaceful Meditation
I Am: Medically Retired
Likes: 34
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Post by andavane on Jul 10, 2017 18:46:00 GMT
Lovely! When you feed them, how do you keep them out? As soon as I remove the lid of mine, they try to rush out all over the place. It's gonna get right difficult when the population explodes!
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Post by TenebrousNova on Jul 11, 2017 11:29:07 GMT
Lovely! When you feed them, how do you keep them out? As soon as I remove the lid of mine, they try to rush out all over the place. It's gonna get right difficult when the population explodes! I've found that a thin layer of talcum powder around the edges seems to work well. It makes them slip and fall when they try to scale it.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Jul 16, 2017 15:26:29 GMT
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Post by TenebrousNova on Jul 31, 2017 18:11:02 GMT
This colony is still doing well. All of the pupae have now been moved into another chamber. I spotted a newly born soldier earlier but she's hiding somewhere at the moment. The queen is still laying eggs with a vengeance. She doesn't even look plump like many queens do...her gaster is more of a flattened sausage.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Aug 6, 2017 0:47:50 GMT
I'm very sad to report that I've just found the queen dead, the workers milling around her in a state of confusion. There's no damage to her I can see and I've barely seen any dead workers or soldiers since I got this colony. There's piles of brood. How could this possibly have happened?
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Post by Wood~Ant on Aug 6, 2017 7:09:05 GMT
I'm very sad to report that I've just found the queen dead, the workers milling around her in a state of confusion. There's no damage to her I can see and I've barely seen any dead workers or soldiers since I got this colony. There's piles of brood. How could this possibly have happened? Sorry to hear this. The same thing happened to me with a colony of these a few years ago, as the queen died without any reason or cause; and it has also occurred to other species I tried keeping, yet ants I thought would be very hard to care for have thrived. It is always very disconcerting when things like this happen, especially when you know you're not at fault.
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