PSA: Be aware of Mites

[larynx]

Hello everyone,

Firstly allow me to explain a little bit about my situation and why I am writing about mites. Earlier this year I noticed it was the Lasius Niger nuptial flight and remembered I had a classic formicarium sitting around on a shelf unused, I quickly threw some stones in it for drainage, then filled it up with builders sand that we had laying around outside. I then pushed a few different angle and depth 'tunnels' into the sand, caught a queen and plonked her in. I taped some paper to the sides so it was dark, crossed my fingers, and left her to it.

Two weeks later I checked and to my surprise she had dug a small chamber and had laid eggs! Great! This was maybe two months ago. I have been following her progress eagerly and was very excited to see more eggs being laid and some even progressing to the next stage... then suddenly some of the eggs disappeared, then some more, then things got slow and quiet.

This is when I started really having a good look and inspecting her chamber, was it the moisture? Mould? Wait.. what the hell, are those super tiny ants running all over everything? No... what the...

Mites.

Perhaps hundreds, of tiny white pixels scurrying around like some kind of plague all over the eggs... now, I am unsure if they were harming the ants, the eggs, or just stressing the queen out? But they had devastated the brood numbers, I assume there must have been dormant eggs in the builders sand and my ants + the perfect warm moist environment I provided gave them a chance to thrive.

So, placing the formicarium on it's side and using a chopstick for excavation and a needle for delicately extracting the brood and removing any mites I have transferred the queen and what eggs I could find to a classic test tube setup... perhaps I should have done this to start with. The whole process has taken me 3 hours of nerve racking nail biting precision. All said and done there's only about 7 eggs, there were significantly more a month ago.

A long story short, I think this is a lesson in why closed ecosystems must be entirely controlled, assumedly in nature there would be predatory mites that would thin the numbers of the buggers attacking my ants, unfortunately it seems none of them were living in the sand I used as my colonies base material.

• Be super careful feeding your ants wild insects or introducing 'decorations' from nature to their environment. I can imagine harmful mites getting into a large colony would be utterly devastating.
• If you are going for a 'classic' formicarium set up, order sterile substrate online, do not use soil from outside you have no idea what is hiding in it.
• If you see lots of tiny white specs running around in your formicarium, it's time for your ants to move home while you eradicate those little buggers.
• It is rumoured that lemon juice is a great mite destroyer... if you have some mites but aren't ready to go nuclear, I have read in multiple places that watering your formicarium with lemon juice could possibly sort it out (citation needed)

I of course will update this post with the fate of my poor little buggers as the situation develops... I hope I managed to get all of the little sods off. I have heard lemon juice

Learn from my experience my friends

Liam

how are these gals doing?

[Adamandtheants]

Please update this I'm very interested to know how your queen is getting on after the stressful ordeal

[GriffinAnt]

yes likewise please update

[larynx]

pretty sure foxish is no longer a member.......

[GriffinAnt]

pretty sure foxish is no longer a member.......

rgr that

[ZedZul]

So although the guy is no longer a member, I'm quite interested to know more about what others did when they saw they had this issue. I'm seeing mites in the nest of my Diacamma Rugosum.

[Gregory2455]

Wait... How/why did so many accounts get deleted?

[MadVampy]

Wait... How/why did so many accounts get deleted?

Because there was over 300 bogus spam accounts created on this forum. I kill over 50 newly made a day easily. Haven't seen any spam ad's lately have you?

[Robert]

Hello all.
On the subject of mites. I was just watching a (Nothing to declare) programme which is about protecting the Australian border. The customs officers on there were examining a cargo ship for border threats and other contrabands. They had a problem when they came to the ships pantry and found Honey. They said that they had to confiscate the honey because it may contain Bee mites.
I have just started feeding my queen Ant Honey. Should I be Concerned about the potential threat of Bee mites? Are they a threat to my Queen?

Thank you for your time On this
Robert

[Gregory2455]

No. You are not going to be finding bee mites in processed honey.