Random SpeciesK Antkeeping Stuff

[SpeciesK]

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*this is a public blog but I did not ask you to read it so do not criticize me or nitpick
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*As ***** as some ants are, I have zero interest in importing ants from outside the USA.
*I have never seen any invasive ants species anywhere, including Red or Black Imported Fire Ants
*I have never seen any live termites of any kind
*I would prefer having fewer large ants than numerous tiny ants
*I tend to be skeptical of anything people say because it's usually based on opinion, gossip, or urban myth instead of actual facts
*Saying something is common sense is a worthless evasion. It is common sense to think the Sun goes around the Earth since you can look outside and see it evidently do that. It is common sense to think a huge iron ball will drop faster in a vacuum than a bean since it's bigger and weighs far more. It is common sense to believe people with more experience and training are always right in spite of science showing them to almost always be wrong eventually
*Just because you feel strongly about something does not make it correct
*Tying knots in sentences is obfuscation not wisdom or knowledge
*Trying to use my imperfect statements against me won't work. Trying to do so just shows you are an internet troll and nothing else.
*I am here because of Ants, not people
*I like Ants, they are interesting. You do not interest me, only the ants you keep interest me.
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***I have no Ants right now. This is just a general, rambling blog entry made for my own amusement later whenever I might get some Ants and can compare how I feel and what I think now compared to later. What I think will change tomorrow ***

[*music plays, credits roll, blooper reel plays, lights come up, people exit, everyone goes back to their lives*]

[SpeciesK]

Reading about how to catch and take care of queen ants has made me remember something that happened long ago. Now I realize I had a queen ant by mistake!
I was somewhere, in a little woods, and sometimes I would see big black ants crawling around doing ant things. One day there were more of them crawling around and some of them were much bigger than usual and slower. I watched them trying to figure out why they all were walking around. I didn't know but thought that with so many it wouldn't hurt if I took one. So I caught a big one in a container. I think it was a plastic bottle. I put wet paper or something in so it wouldn't dry out, and took it home intending to figure out how to feed it and have it as a weird pet. I put it somewhere, it got moved around, and eventually lost and forgotten.
Poor thing.
But then later, much later, months later, I found it and opened it and found the ant inside along with a few other normal big black ants! I felt ashamed to have forgotten it, but mostly couldn't figure out how the other ants got in there with it! I don't clearly remember what the container was, I think it was a plastic bottle. I don't know. But the ants were too big to get into it, even tiny ants couldn't have gotten inside. And the big ant was alone and less than the volume of the other ants combined. It was a mystery to me! I also don't clearly remember what I put inside for food, if anything, or how I kept it from drying out, and how I got air in while blocking everything else out. Maybe having the screw cap on but loose so air could go between the threads and the bottle. It had fallen into a little box and then a few things had fallen on top so I didn't see it for months.
I was torn between being ashamed of trapping this poor giant ant in a container and losing it and it starving all that time somehow while I forgot it, and, dying of curiosity over how it survived so long, how these _other_ ants got in there with it and why they all weren't eating each other, or maybe they were even if that made no sense. A friend told me they stayed alive by eating each other and didn't know what I meant when I said it was impossible. They also insisted I had to have put all the ants in there, there was no other way.
And I kinda wanted to keep it, but realized I didn't really know how, and it was obvious since I lost it for months that I couldn't be trusted to do anything but kill it anyway. So I decided to let them go...
I took them back to that area and put them next to a tree or stump or log on the ground. They looked completely confused and unhappy in the wild compared to the container, another mystery for me. They stayed closer to the big ant than away, but the big ant seemed to want to scrunch down against the side of something. I really did not know what to do. I knew I couldn't take care of them, but they didn't know anything about where they were either. It would be torture to put them back in the container, but how were they supposed to take care of themselves being scrunched next to something? I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to do!
So, I decided they had zero chance of surviving with me, and a slight chance of surviving after getting kick outside into the wild, so, I gritted my teeth (yes, I really did that) and explained to them (yes, I really did that) why I had to leave them there even when they didn't know what they were doing. They just waved there antennae and legs and looked lost. And I left them there while looking back the whole time. It was sad.
Now I realize I had found a queen Carpenter Ant and had blundered into starting a tiny colony of them by leaving her alone to do her queen ant business, and she had her few nanitics with her, maybe five or so. And leaving her exposed next to a stump in a woods was well-meaning but they would have been eaten immediately by a bird or maybe other ants.
But now I know dumb luck can help me even more now that I know queen ants don't need my constant help and worrying over in order to start their colony. But it was only luck that she survived that long.

[SpeciesK]

This doesn't have to do with antkeeping. I am sick as a dog. I have lost about five pounds the last few days from diarrhea because of stuff I ate and ten pounds within a few weeks before that because, well, not eating much obviously. At the moment I feel like puking all the time, sometimes I actually hurt inside until the diarrhea comes out. I am not sure if I have a fever or not, I don't suppose it matters. I actually spent a whole day in bed yesterday and felt bad. Now for some reason the bottom of one foot hurts like I stepped on a nail even though I haven't. And I obviously feel very tired and actually weak. Eating doesn't help things yet. And I seem to have some weird allergy reaction in my eyes or something, because they water all the time and sometimes sting. Have you ever slept almost continuously for more than a day? Well, I did, and I expect to do more of it, if only to escape feeling like puking all the time. Looking at ants would help but there aren't any.

[SpeciesK]

Someone quoted this to try to justify not transporting ants to another USA State:

"The pest list represents well-documented organisms of greatest risk to the United States
and is not an all-inclusive list of actionable pests. APHIS (Animal and Plant Health Inspection
Service) may take quarantine action on organisms within the following higher taxa whether or
not they are included on the pest list."
https://www.aphis.usda.gov/import_expor ... tement.pdf
The entire family Formicidae are treated as pest organisms for direct or indirect damage to crops."

The problem with the quote is that it is talking about importing non-native species into the USA by whatever means, and then transporting them to a different State. It has nothing to do with native species, so trying to apply it to them is not according to the actual law. I have not found any laws dealing with native species. That doesn't mean there are none, just that the only ones I have read don't deal with it. Its all research. If I find it then I will tell about it. I will help prove things either way, just people need to show me where to find things if they want my help doing it. I don't believe either side just because they say so. I need proof not opinions or hearsay. It should not be hard to prove either way.
The company AntsCanada has made it a policy to not sell ants across Province or State lines. That is just peachy. No one can or should try to convince them otherwise. Its their company, they decide what they are going to do. I can think of a couple reasons why an international company would not want to do it. My couple reason may have nothing to do with theirs though.
My blog entries are unimportant. So are yours. They are just stories. I have zero ants and don't know anyone personally who does have any. I am neutral on all supposed problems.

[Martialis]

SpeciesK, that quote's talking about permits through APHIS, and why you can take beetles or scorpions anywhere, but not ants.
'

laws are weird.

[SpeciesK]

I made a post but it *** SPAM *** it... I saw a daffodil sprouting up in a sunny spot. I am dissolving into yellow oil inside. Maybe once I dissolve ants can eat me. A new kind of ant. A Species K ant. Definitely invasive. But what will be the scientific name? Hmmm...
Myrmecospecies kaiensis. Yeah, that sound reasonable.

[SpeciesK]

I have a few worker ants in a bottle, maybe ten or fifteen, that I got from somewhere. Reddish head, dark pointy gaster, two little roundish things between the second segment and the gaster. They are slightly different sizes and the biggest ones walk around with their mandibles open all the way like they want to bite something, which I probably would too if I was in a bottle. The inside of the bottle is damp and has a few dirt crumbs from their ant mound. They don't act too wacky. I don't think they will live long. When they die I will keep them somehow I suppose.

[SpeciesK]

I am still dissolving inside into yellow oil for some reason. The ten or fifteen ants I have are interesting to watch, I wish I had some more, though these are interesting enough I guess.

[SpeciesK]

I dug up some ant colonies and put them in buckets. Of course they were very upset. In one bucket I put three different colonies thinking the strongest would survive and I would have a strong ant colony. BZZZZZT! All of them died.100% death. One seemed to be a small colony living next to an Altoids container. I had high hopes for that one, they were very small and the colony didn't seem to be very deep. They lived for a couple days, then disappeared... where did they go? they didn't get out... oh well. Another seemed okay but now there are just a few male (I think) nanitics and a few other ants left... too bad.
At the moment I have four potential colonies left. Oh, and on all of the buckets I put alcohol/baby powder from the dirt up to the top, then vaseline in the top inch or so. They smell repulsive from the baby powder and baby vaseline but none are getting out, so far anyway.
One colony (I am guessing Tetramorium because they are small) seems strong enough and they are excavating holes and piling up grains of dirt, and I fed them a few crickets.
One is very weak and I think they probably won't make it because there are not very many but I'm not sure; it is actually a food container I put the dug up colony into and then put that on top of more dirt from their hole, and then that all put into a large bucket just to hold it all; they aren't doing great.
Another colony has dug holes and carry dead ants around and sometimes are active and sometimes not and sometimes eat something and most of the time not; I don't know what to make of them because sometimes they act strong and sometimes weak.
And the fourth one I think is weak because they only have a few ants crawl around; at first they were digging like crazy but now I basically don't see them.
I bought a little can of crickets that you feed to reptiles; they smell really bad, and the crickets look like mutant roaches, but I guess they work. And I put some Starbursts in each for sugar, which basically are just melting instead of being eaten. I also tried little pieces of brownies.
None of the ants are really very interested in the Starbursts or brownies, although they investigated them at first. The crickets are more interesting to them if they show any interest in anything.
The ants, whether they have queens or not, are really interesting to watch. The problem is they are not out walking around all the time on their dirt. And of course there are not many of them and most are decreasing or holding steady at the moment. I bought plastic tubing to connect things together but haven't done anything with it; mostly because I am uncertain if they are going to survive, but also because I am having trouble finding a connector for the tubing that I could glue into the side of a bucket if I wanted to.

My main questions now that I have dug up ants and killed most of them, and the ones I have are various forms of weak, I think:

They are dirt colonies and I don't dare dig any into the dirt, or I will kill more. How can I tell if my ants have a queen?

If they have no queen, and so no eggs or brood, then will they stop eating crickets, or will they eat them anyway?

[Martialis]

I dug up some ant colonies and put them in buckets. Of course they were very upset. In one bucket I put three different colonies thinking the strongest would survive and I would have a strong ant colony. BZZZZZT! All of them died.100% death. One seemed to be a small colony living next to an Altoids container. I had high hopes for that one, they were very small and the colony didn't seem to be very deep. They lived for a couple days, then disappeared... where did they go? they didn't get out... oh well. Another seemed okay but now there are just a few male (I think) nanitics and a few other ants left... too bad.
At the moment I have four potential colonies left. Oh, and on all of the buckets I put alcohol/baby powder from the dirt up to the top, then vaseline in the top inch or so. They smell repulsive from the baby powder and baby vaseline but none are getting out, so far anyway.
One colony (I am guessing Tetramorium because they are small) seems strong enough and they are excavating holes and piling up grains of dirt, and I fed them a few crickets.
One is very weak and I think they probably won't make it because there are not very many but I'm not sure; it is actually a food container I put the dug up colony into and then put that on top of more dirt from their hole, and then that all put into a large bucket just to hold it all; they aren't doing great.
Another colony has dug holes and carry dead ants around and sometimes are active and sometimes not and sometimes eat something and most of the time not; I don't know what to make of them because sometimes they act strong and sometimes weak.
And the fourth one I think is weak because they only have a few ants crawl around; at first they were digging like crazy but now I basically don't see them.
I bought a little can of crickets that you feed to reptiles; they smell really bad, and the crickets look like mutant roaches, but I guess they work. And I put some Starbursts in each for sugar, which basically are just melting instead of being eaten. I also tried little pieces of brownies.
None of the ants are really very interested in the Starbursts or brownies, although they investigated them at first. The crickets are more interesting to them if they show any interest in anything.
The ants, whether they have queens or not, are really interesting to watch. The problem is they are not out walking around all the time on their dirt. And of course there are not many of them and most are decreasing or holding steady at the moment. I bought plastic tubing to connect things together but haven't done anything with it; mostly because I am uncertain if they are going to survive, but also because I am having trouble finding a connector for the tubing that I could glue into the side of a bucket if I wanted to.

My main questions now that I have dug up ants and killed most of them, and the ones I have are various forms of weak, I think:

They are dirt colonies and I don't dare dig any into the dirt, or I will kill more. How can I tell if my ants have a queen?

If they have no queen, and so no eggs or brood, then will they stop eating crickets, or will they eat them anyway?

if they don't have any eggs/brood, they won't eat protein.

You can tell if you see increases in brood, the queen herself, or if your colony doesn't die out.