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Post by TenebrousNova on Feb 15, 2018 13:01:38 GMT
I had planned a few weeks ago to order a colony of Pheidole flaveria from British Ants that had two queens, but sadly it sold out. But then when I checked again yesterday... "Oh no, Nova... You're not ordering more ants are you? You already got three this week, think about your wallet! Don't do it Nova- oh, too late..." They arrived this morning, which is the fastest service I've seen from an ant supplier. I think Sean saw me coming...anyway, there are three queens, several soldiers and over 50 workers. Might be closer to 100, actually! There's only a few larvae I can see at the moment, but there is a small ball of eggs which will hopefully begin to grow before long. I'm pleased to say that they are already eating, which was more than could be said for my late Pheidole noda colony, which refused everything I gave them. Here they are drinking some honey. I apologise for the poor quality of my photos, as it's hard to get clear ones through the condensation. Here's the eggs. And here's an even worse photo of the three queens, which are perched at the back. I'm surprised by how small the P.flaveria queens are, they are smaller than a P.pallidula queen. I'm guessing that since this is a polygynous colony, the queen's gasters don't grow as large as usual to facilitate egg production? I'm very pleased with this colony and hope that they do well. As usual, comments & feedback are welcome!
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Post by Wood~Ant on Feb 15, 2018 23:59:15 GMT
Very nice. I'm assuming you got the last colony as I cannot see any more on Sean's site?
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Post by TenebrousNova on Feb 16, 2018 1:33:55 GMT
Very nice. I'm assuming you got the last colony as I cannot see any more on Sean's site? It looks that way, but he seemed to restock quickly enough last time. He seems to sell his Asian species very fast as the colonies I was eyeing before went within days. Considering how cheap they are, I'm not surprised. This colony seems to be quite calm. I was worried about condensation caused by the heat mat being a hazard to them, but there's not much of it and I have the test tube at an angle so any droplets will just run back into the cotton. The tiny workers don't seem bothered by it. I took a peek earlier and saw one of the queens was sitting in the middle of the test tube with a good portion of the workers. They had brought some of the brood with them and it looks like there's at least one pupa among the eggs and few larvae.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Feb 16, 2018 18:58:57 GMT
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Post by TenebrousNova on Feb 27, 2018 13:08:17 GMT
The workers stopped misbehaving after a while and I was able to change the cotton so that it isn't full of holes anymore. I also put in a small piece of kitchen roll to help soak up extra moisture and provide more surface area for the colony. Two of the queens have moved into it whilst the third is content to stay on the cotton at the back. The queens sometimes sit down with each other but mostly stay in their own spaces.
The colony is quite greedy, so hopefully there will be an increase in population at some point.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Mar 8, 2018 11:27:45 GMT
The colony moved a few days ago under the cover of night into an acrylic nest and seem to be happy enough in there. They're foraging and last night pulled a dead cricket into their nest. There's some large droplets of condensation I'm a bit worried about and they also make viewing the colony underneath quite difficult. Wish I knew how to mitigate it.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Mar 25, 2018 13:01:39 GMT
There has been some workers dying off lately, but hopefully that's down to old age? There's a ball of eggs that is beginning to hatch so hopefully the population will start to go back up before too long.
I've seen that more colonies are for sale and I'm wondering if it's possible to add new queens to a P.flaveria colony without conflict. I have asked Sean if the queens he gets from his supplier could be related but had no response...I think it would be too risky anyway.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Jun 15, 2018 14:38:13 GMT
Sadly, this colony has died. They would eat plenty but the brood seemed to develop slowly, certainly not fast enough to replace the workers that died off. Without them, the queens followed.
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