Formica Rufa progress

[Ginnysants]

Being from a boring part of tempetate Europe and not liking the idea of buying imported ants there's not a lot of 'big' ants around. When I ran across some huge ant queens in the forest I was overjoyed only to find out they were Formica rufa (or a very closely related species) when I got home bummed me out. In the few articles I found on this species in captivity they were deemed nearly impossible to get started. I decided to give it a try anyways. Due to the lack of information on this species I felt obligated to start sharing my progress now that there actually is some progress to talk about.
On a little side note: I'm not a great writer and English is not my native language. I will try to keep this as readable as possible but I can't promise anything. The main purpose is to share how and what I did with anyone interested in Formica Rufa or related species since I could barely find anything that led to a success.

I'd like to stress that before you attempt this you have to check up on your local laws because this species is considered to be endangered in a lot of countries
Where I live they did loosen up the rules about this significantly a couple of years back so only established colonies and their nests are protected and I'd say rightfully so. The forests here are literally crawling with these beasts.

After catching the queen's. Late April 2018
When I found out I caught a paracitic species I started doing research. Before I do something like this I want to read up about it as much as I can. The two most common ways I found to get paracitic queen's started is to either introduce host workers from a compatible species, or brood from a compatible species. Since I did not want to dig up an ants nest in the middle of the forest I went with the former. I went back to the forest and caught about twenty Formica Fusca workers from the same trail. I separated them in groups of four to six in testubes and let them be for a couple of days before introducing a Formica Rufa queen to each group. When I attached the queen's to their group of workers there was a huge difference in reaction. One queen was extremely hostile and started snapping at the workers when they got close. One group of workers was hostile to their queen. And the other three were somewhere in between. Something I noticed was that the trophollaxis seemed really forced, but it was trophollaxis anyways. A day later the three Inbetweeners seemed to have settled with eachother. The hostile queen had murdered her workers, and the hostile workers had murdered their queen. So I decided to put the roughlings together and a week later even them seemed to have accepted eachother.
The setup I decided on for feeding was a plastic q-tip box with a bit of sand on the bottom and a hole for the testube to slide in. I used pipe insulation on the testubes to keep light out, and the temperature stable, while still being able to look in if I needed to. I glued the box to a piece of wood so I could move the entire setup without having the testubes moving around too much. After that I kept them in the shade on the top row of a bookshelf. There a bit of honey in a little cup in there at all times and I fed them each a mealworm roughly twice a week. I started noticing two of the four remaining setups were acting like I wanted them to: workers roaming the outworld, eating the food I provided them and returning to the testube, and most importantly: no dead queen's to be found. The other two had their queen running around in the outworld being all stressed out sometimes. As long as they were still alive I felt like I didn't have to worry about it too much though.

Four months later. August 2018
After not looking into the testubes for nearly four months I decided to peek into the tubes of the two with the stressed out queen's and I found out both the workers and the queen's were still alive. They still didn't have any brood at all though which started to worry me. The other two tubes did a lot better though. One had a pile of larvae and even a couple of pupae. The final testube was doing by far the best. After only halfway removing the insulation I saw a pile of brood with two F.Fusca workers and three F.Rufa workers tending to them (I would add a crappy picture taking with my phone but it's not letting me). I decided to move their testtube to a better observable pot made out of clear plastic and I added some dried out pine leaves since that's what they like to build with in the wild and the next morning theyve allready constructed a pile of sand and pineleaves at the entrance of their testube.

Let me know what you think. I'll post any big updates on this project here. Feel free to ask any questions.

[Ginnysants]

Picture of f.rufa and f.fusca workers tending to brood:
http://imgur.com/gallery/KKy57FD

[Ginnysants]

The colony that was growing the quickest was foraging on a daily basis, inspecting the walls of the 10 by 10cm container outworld I gave them, so I decided it was time for an upgrade. I bought a glass fishtank and some ferns and a little bonsai. They are forest ants after all. Using some potting mix, some dried out pieces of birch and a some quartz I found during my holiday I created something that felt more like their natural habitat.
Afterwards I picked up some pineleaves and a small sapling to make them feel at home. I removed the testtube from their old and outworld and placed it into their new tank. I'm not planning on making them move with lights since this species is very sensitive to stress. I'll just let them move out, if and when they so desire. After checking on them I saw a pile of atleast 25 pupae and two Rufa workers tending to them.

Some pictures:
http://imgur.com/gallery/lpA6im7
Picture 1: front view of the tank.
Picture 2: a worker on a piece of birch
Picture 3: a worker moving a pineleave towards the entrance of the testtube.

[Sefrexus]

good job