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Post by rainbee on Jun 7, 2013 8:25:38 GMT
Hi I'm new to keeping ants and have been given a test tube containing a Messor barb queen, a worker and a few eggs. I've read up on how to keep these correctly and have placed the test tube open into a tank with a deep substrate of sand and soil mixed with stones etc. The thing is the queen is now wandering about all over the place leaving the worker to tend to the eggs (which look healthy and white). Is this normal behaviour? I was told to put the test tube in the tank open like this.. was it the correct thing to do? Thanks  |
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Post by Jenny on Jun 7, 2013 8:35:16 GMT
Welcome to the forum Rainbee. Messor queens will take a while to decide where they want to make entrance holes, and will dart about the tank for a day or two. What a lot of people do is to make a couple of small holes to get them going, and give her the idea. Sometimes the queen will use them, other times they will come back out and start their own digging, somewhere else.
They also need peace and quiet, as stress will also send them scurrying around the tank.
If the queen, worker and brood have left the test tube, then remove it as they are showing signs of looking for a new nesting site.
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Post by Wood~Ant on Jun 7, 2013 8:58:49 GMT
Hi Rainbee and welcome to the Ant Hill This behaviour among larger queens is fairly common. As her worker is a small nanitic (first generation) the worker will act as a nurse for the brood; and having no others to forage, your queen is either looking for a suitable spot to dig out her nest, or may even be searching for food.  Place a few small seeds in a plastic bottle cap (the flat ones off supermarket milk are ideal), and this will encourage the queen to chew the soft seed pulp into a substance known as Ant Bread, which she will then feed to herself and her brood. I have raised several colonies of this ant species with canary seeds alone, and they didn't get any insect prey food items until the colony was at least over a year old. |
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Post by rainbee on Jun 7, 2013 9:10:48 GMT
Thank you both for the quick replies . Shes taken some seeds and gone back to the tube now, so must have been hungry. She is safely tucked away on a dark shelf with the rest of the tanks of inverts I keep, so is in a nice, quiet, warm, dark spot  They are so facinating to watch! I can definitley see me getting more. |
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Post by Wood~Ant on Jun 7, 2013 9:17:28 GMT
They are so facinating to watch! I can definitley see me getting more. If you need help deciding what other ant species to keep, we are all here to help and there is lots of info about many varied ant species kept by other members.  |
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Post by rainbee on Jun 7, 2013 10:55:37 GMT
Thank you very much Will deffo be back to pick your brains! It seems like a lovely forum x |
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Post by Zarbi on Jun 7, 2013 11:02:55 GMT
There are some great people here with lots of knowledge about ants, and the staff members are great at helping, so you will have fun being with us Rainbee.  |
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