The AntsCanada Ant Forum's

Hi so i went to my grandparents house and found a colony in a acorn. after origonally thinking they were temnothorax i soon found out that they are tapinoma sessile!
Here are some pics




and here is their full album
https://www.flickr.com/photos/155368381@N07/albums/72157696899136684/with/41758132684/

I decided to break their nut and move them to the tube.
i have found out they like apples and sometimes sugar water and mealworms
really out of all my colonies these guys are the least pickiest of them all

here are colonies numbers
queens 1
workers ~16
eggs 10-15
larvae 20-25
pupae 5-10


also the colony has organised the brood pile a lot since that picture was taken.

Cool, one of my favorites! Don't see too many journals of this species.

UPDATE!!!
sorry for not being online to much anymore i am really busy but latest on this colony. A lot has happened. first i gave them a new home because the small test tube portal did not really work for them. every time i tried to clean or give them food they would run every where so i gave them a new home. it is a Tupperware box with potting soil in it plus a couple rocks. they still live in the tube though and surprisingly have never tried a test tube so new info, they like dryer nests. in the last couple of days all of the pupae have hatched an the colony now has a way smaller brood pile of only like 20 eggs larvae and pupae. but their is like 20 new callow workers inside the nest. I have also found their favorite foods. meal worms and sugar water.

pics coming soon

colony numbers
queen 1
workers ~30 i think
brood ~20

everything is going good and they have new eggs!

Update!!
so their set-up got tossed on to the floor by my little brother and all the dirt and everything got into the carpet. luckily the ants did nothing they just stayed in their test tube like nothing happened which is weird because this species is know for panicking is situations like that. any way i was able to get the dirt and the set-up back in the container. now 2 weeks later they have finnaly moved out of that test tube!!. they now are nesting in the soil


also does anyone know what this is? their are about 6-7 of these gnat things that are obsessed with this set-up.

so these ants are still alive even though they are not eating any protein as it seems to me. but they still have some eggs and brood witch is really weird, maybe they are eating the spring tails. not much to say other than they are their

hey I haven't posted in a while but just wanted to say that the ants are still alive and well. one of them has been carrying around a dead member for the last day though. they are healthy and in "hibernation".

ok so lately I have been doing a lot of maintenance and cleaning up around my "ant space" and I just put all of my ants in the basement crawl space...
...Except for these little guys because when doing this maintenance all of my ants are super slow and sluggish, just like they should be, except for this colony. They send out at least 4 workers all the time and were really active, so i'm just thinking that since tapinoma sessile can be found as far south as Guatemala, could this colony think that they are in a warmer climate and don't need to hibernate? so first off I changed there container by carefully scooping out the soil to one of my other colonies empty plastic outworlds they panicked of course and ran off in separate directions but by now i think they got together again. The only thing that troubles me is that i didn't see there queen. It's probably because they got her underground fast or she was just to hard to see or distinguish from an ordinary worker. if the queen is dead I still have a plan. Because this species is super polygenous I am planing to find another queen or colony and merge them. Also i'm sorry I've been inactive lately i'm going to get back in to the forums so expect regular updates (if the colony is not in hibernation.)

also quickly i think that the colony numbers are still at about 25-30 ants