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Post by Wood~Ant on Sept 21, 2010 10:02:57 GMT
Questions or comments about my 2010 niger colony may be posted here.
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Post by TenebrousNova on Jun 20, 2011 7:33:33 GMT
What would you estimate the worker count to be?  My own L.niger are starting to multiply pretty quickly, despite the queen also being from the 2010 flights and not boosted during the claustral stage.  |
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Post by Wood~Ant on Jun 20, 2011 8:12:54 GMT
Hard to say what the new worker count will be Timenova, as they often hide their larvae; but I estimate this colony will increase from its present 35 workers to around 200 this year if the population growth continues at its present rate |
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Post by TenebrousNova on Jun 20, 2011 8:18:16 GMT
Mine could potentially reach 60 this year if all of their present pupae hatch, but your colony seems to be doing astronomically in terms of brood amount. ;D
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Post by Zarbi on Jun 23, 2011 11:23:19 GMT
I assume you will be collecting newly mated flavus and niger queens when the next flights occur Wood? Sorry to hear you had to let this lot go, but you've probably done the right thing if fungus was developing in their nest  |
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Post by TenebrousNova on Sept 6, 2011 10:58:20 GMT
Referring to the recently disbanded alliance of three queens, is the dominant one showing signs of injury despite her victory?
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Post by Wood~Ant on Sept 6, 2011 11:17:45 GMT
Referring to the recently disbanded alliance of three queens, is the dominant one showing signs of injury despite her battle? None whatsoever, she has survived without a scratch. I have now seen the other missing queen who is also dead, and from the look of it she is being fed to a bunch of larvae in a far corner of the chamber. The other dead queen is untouched as yet. I know why the workers picked one queen to die, as she has damage to the plates on her gaster exposing the soft parts of her abdomen. This has not affected the workers behaviour to the brood in any way, and they seem more attached to the remaining queen as they climb onto her and lick her a lot. Their "Queen" is moving around more now and appears to be enjoying the extra attention from the family, much as the Honeypot queen did on the recent BBC documentary |
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Post by TenebrousNova on Sept 7, 2011 15:55:53 GMT
So it looks like she did indeed have an unseen injury, or a fault that caused the workers to turn on her.  Will you be giving the remaining brood to another queen? |
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Post by Wood~Ant on Sept 8, 2011 7:36:31 GMT
So it looks like she did indeed have an unseen injury, or a fault that caused the workers to turn on her. Will you be giving the remaining brood to another queen? This morning the workers have actually broken out of the chamber (claustral cell) and are searching all over the rest of the set up (Ant World). I cannot get to the brood without going past the workers, or running the risk of burying them, so I am going to allow them to find the chamber of the other queen who also has workers and some brood in the hope that they may adopt her as their own. This may be a risky experiment, but if such things happen in the wild, then it could mean the remaining healthy queen will inherit all the workers and the entire brood from the 3 queen alliance which has now fallen. If the latter are now queenless, then their only hope of survival is amalgamating themselves with the smaller colony, as at least they still have a nice big queen who is alive |
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