The AntsCanada Ant Forum's

Ok great because I actually have everything I need to do this before winter. In fact I just checked and I have 30 neoniger ants in the cacoon stage. I could easily remove them and pretty quickly have 30 callow workers. How lucky I am to have found a parasitic queen to a colony I already own. So now it seems like even more of a risk to overwinter if I don't have too. Great guide by the way.

I hope one of us soon becomes the first ant keeper to ever raise an Acanthomyops colony from a queen.

Batspiderfish wrote:I hope one of us soon becomes the first ant keeper to ever raise an Acanthomyops colony from a queen.

*and host

"A small sample of host workers and a manageable number of pupae are kept in a test tube setup"
How many pupae do you think are manageable, 10, 20? And the number of host workers 2-3?

Also I was wondering about doing another slight varriant of this method. Sort of a mix between your first method mentioned and the callow method.

What if I took 15-20 pupaes put them in a test tube set up. I could even include a few eggs and larvae if I should? Then I take callow workers from my colony (right now I see 1, but like I said I have 30 pupaes) and put them in the same test tube. I place the test tube into a small out world. Now I've created a non hostile, undefendable mini colony with only callow workers and no queen. I then place the claviger queen into the outworld and she's free to do her process. I guess it's your first method without the 20 hostile host worker ants.

Any thoughts? I only get one chance so I'm trying to minimize risks to the queen.

JoeHostile wrote:"A small sample of host workers and a manageable number of pupae are kept in a test tube setup"
How many pupae do you think are manageable, 10, 20? And the number of host workers 2-3?

Also I was wondering about doing another slight varriant of this method. Sort of a mix between your first method mentioned and the callow method.

What if I took 15-20 pupaes put them in a test tube set up. I could even include a few eggs and larvae if I should? Then I take callow workers from my colony (right now I see 1, but like I said I have 30 pupaes) and put them in the same test tube. I place the test tube into a small out world. Now I've created a non hostile, undefendable mini colony with only callow workers and no queen. I then place the claviger queen into the outworld and she's free to do her process. I guess it's your first method without the 20 hostile host worker ants.

Any thoughts? I only get one chance so I'm trying to minimize risks to the queen.

There isn't really a solid number for how many workers it takes to care for how many brood, and it largely depends on the age of the workers used. For now, I would say that a manageable number of brood is no more than six per worker. Larvae are great to have after the queen is introduced, as I suspect social parasites regularly coax larvae out of their protein -- it might be a normal part of her founding process, although seemingly not essential (with Chthonolasius).

You don't need to offer the brood all at once. If you keep the brood and mature nurse workers in another queen-less tube, You can introduce that callow worker and a few pupae and just add to that as time goes on.

JoeHostile wrote:Ok great because I actually have everything I need to do this before winter. In fact I just checked and I have 30 neoniger ants in the cacoon stage. I could easily remove them and pretty quickly have 30 callow workers. How lucky I am to have found a parasitic queen to a colony I already own. So now it seems like even more of a risk to overwinter if I don't have too. Great guide by the way.

One problem. Cocoons don't open by themselves, they need other ants to open them. Lasius social parasite queens can't open cocoons.

Ok I put about 8 cacoons, 4 or 5 larvae and about 15 eggs plus 3 callow workers in a test tube. Once the 3 callow workers gathered all the scattered eggs ect in a pile and begin caring for them I introduced the Claviger queen. It's been quite a few hours and the queen is getting along with the 3 workers.

That's how yah do it!

Batspiderfish wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 08, 2016 9:25 pm

I hope one of us soon becomes the first ant keeper to ever raise an Acanthomyops colony from a queen.

I guess I win this contest-mine has workers