IceWhytes Messor barbarus Journal

[IceWhyte]

Hey all,

I decided I will keep a journal on here. Some of you may know I have blog which I regularly update regarding my Messor barbarus colony. From now on I will post updates on here aswell as my blog so if you want to know what has happened thus far check out the blog; tonysmessors.blogspot.com/

Hopefully update soon

[IceWhyte]

After taking the advice of the fellow members(& admin), I decided to try to get some rich foods to the queen. I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner but I got a small pipe and pushed it down into the area where the queen is, put various foods in the tube and gently blew the end of the tube and all the foods are now in the brood chamber. The foods I used where apefola, suger grains, fish food flakes, grass seed, dandelion seeds and some harder seeds, so there is plenty for her to choose from. She had already started showing interest in the apefola and the sugar. She still has the one egg but it does look slightly bigger. I will just leave her now for a few days and see how she gets on.

[IceWhyte]

My Messor queen is now dead. I think I put her too close to the radiator and thats what killed her.

[batspiderfish]

That's a shame. She could easily have been beyond intervention, though.

[TenebrousNova]

Sorry to hear that.
Will you be getting another (Hopefully, luckier) queen this year?

[IceWhyte]

Yeh was my fault though. Yip I bought one from Bobdol, this one will be a success though.ha.

[shane]

Jan 10, 2012 18:32:52 GMT IceWhyte said:

My Messor queen is now dead. I think I put her too close to the radiator and thats what killed her.

sorry to hear about that, I had the opasite with my black queen with been to cold or she was unwell
when I put her in shed to hibenate in november to find her workers pulling bits of her around.

I hope you have luck if your trying another queen, and next time do not cook her but put her in a
warm room. When I used bottles to keep my queen warm over a year ago, I just used warm water
in bottle, not too hot or cold, I also had to keep nest alittle damp every day which with left over food
after a day started to mold easy.

[IceWhyte]

Thanks for the tips, think the new queen will be more successful. Did you give them heat at night aswell?

[shane]

Jan 10, 2012 21:47:21 GMT IceWhyte said:

Thanks for the tips, think the new queen will be more successful. Did you give them heat at night aswell?

Not all time as room was warm, most of winter, Just on frosty nights when we had snow and room
dropped to around 2c when heating went off I keeped her warm.

With temp around 7 or 9c she should hibernate and above messor queen should become active.

[IceWhyte]

So how often do u refill the hot water bottle?

[Wood~Ant]

I find Messor barb queens do better when they have more than 7 workers, as once they have 12 or more they rarely fail to found a big colony.
Good luck with the new lady.

[shane]

Jan 11, 2012 2:27:35 GMT IceWhyte said:

So how often do u refill the hot water bottle?

Around every 8 to 12 hours. I should have put times I did that in my jernels a year ago. But it depends on room temp.

[IceWhyte]

Jan 11, 2012 9:48:18 GMT Wood~Ant said:

I find Messor barb queens do better when they have more than 7 workers, as once they have 12 or more they rarely fail to found a big colony.
Good luck with the new lady.

Thanks Wood. Yeh I thought when my old queen got to 15 workers things were looking good but I must of been doing something wrong as they all died off.

[TenebrousNova]

Good to see that Queen Latifah has arrived. Good luck with her.

[IceWhyte]

Haha. Cheers. Don't know if its too early to say but I think my old queen has come back from the dead. The next day after she "died" I was just about to feed her to my Myrmica and noticed her antenae moving. She wasnt moving for a few days but I put honey and water next to her. Now shes up and walking about, a little sluggish and off balanace though. Ha