I need help with my Camponotus parius colony.

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SolenopsisKeeper
Posts: 2402
Joined: Sun Dec 12, 2021 11:41 am
Location: United States, Florida

Re: I need help with my Camponotus parius colony.

Post: # 95353Post SolenopsisKeeper
Tue Aug 02, 2022 8:40 am

JaydenScheepers wrote:
Tue Aug 02, 2022 6:12 am
Today one of the mealworms got into the colony's nest, so basically all 27 worker paniced and ran around in the nest like headless chickens (the major, only soldier in the colony hid in the queen's chamber). And so the queen decided to head out of her chamber and fight the mealworm head on, while the workers were scramming, the queen tracked down the mealworm and wrestled it and killed it pretty quickly. This queen is quite fascinating, she does not behave like other queens I've seen on the internet. Yes vibrations makes her panic, but throughout the colony's life span since the first worker, she has been the first one to investigate food, a new nest, and a out world. She shows more bravery and boldness than I had anticipated.
Majors are cowards in smaller colonies.

The queen went out to help, because if an intruder killed her workers, she would die, so if she risked her life fighting, she had better odds.
When you accidentally reply to yourself…

JaydenScheepers
Posts: 358
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2022 10:14 am
Location: Phuket

Re: I need help with my Camponotus parius colony.

Post: # 95374Post JaydenScheepers
Wed Aug 03, 2022 5:42 am

SolenopsisKeeper wrote:
Tue Aug 02, 2022 8:40 am
JaydenScheepers wrote:
Tue Aug 02, 2022 6:12 am
Today one of the mealworms got into the colony's nest, so basically all 27 worker paniced and ran around in the nest like headless chickens (the major, only soldier in the colony hid in the queen's chamber). And so the queen decided to head out of her chamber and fight the mealworm head on, while the workers were scramming, the queen tracked down the mealworm and wrestled it and killed it pretty quickly. This queen is quite fascinating, she does not behave like other queens I've seen on the internet. Yes vibrations makes her panic, but throughout the colony's life span since the first worker, she has been the first one to investigate food, a new nest, and a out world. She shows more bravery and boldness than I had anticipated.
Majors are cowards in smaller colonies.

The queen went out to help, because if an intruder killed her workers, she would die, so if she risked her life fighting, she had better odds.
Fair enough, but if the threat was strong enough to kill 27 workers the queen wouldn't stand a chance, so it would be a suicide mission in that case.
Keeping:

• Cataulacus granulatus x2
• Camponotus parius
• Odontomachus sp x4
• Pheidole prava x1
• Pseudoneoponera sp x1

SolenopsisKeeper
Posts: 2402
Joined: Sun Dec 12, 2021 11:41 am
Location: United States, Florida

Re: I need help with my Camponotus parius colony.

Post: # 95385Post SolenopsisKeeper
Wed Aug 03, 2022 7:06 pm

JaydenScheepers wrote:
Wed Aug 03, 2022 5:42 am
SolenopsisKeeper wrote:
Tue Aug 02, 2022 8:40 am
JaydenScheepers wrote:
Tue Aug 02, 2022 6:12 am
Today one of the mealworms got into the colony's nest, so basically all 27 worker paniced and ran around in the nest like headless chickens (the major, only soldier in the colony hid in the queen's chamber). And so the queen decided to head out of her chamber and fight the mealworm head on, while the workers were scramming, the queen tracked down the mealworm and wrestled it and killed it pretty quickly. This queen is quite fascinating, she does not behave like other queens I've seen on the internet. Yes vibrations makes her panic, but throughout the colony's life span since the first worker, she has been the first one to investigate food, a new nest, and a out world. She shows more bravery and boldness than I had anticipated.
Majors are cowards in smaller colonies.

The queen went out to help, because if an intruder killed her workers, she would die, so if she risked her life fighting, she had better odds.
Fair enough, but if the threat was strong enough to kill 27 workers the queen wouldn't stand a chance, so it would be a suicide mission in that case.
Queens have much stronger exoskeleton, but if it tried to kill the queen maybe it could take it down while dying
When you accidentally reply to yourself…

JaydenScheepers
Posts: 358
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2022 10:14 am
Location: Phuket

Re: I need help with my Camponotus parius colony.

Post: # 95395Post JaydenScheepers
Wed Aug 03, 2022 10:33 pm

The queen's gaster shrunk, is this normal? Maybe it's the periodic break from egg laying I've heard about. Yesterday I caught the workers eating a pupae, they eat little if anything I put in the out world. They have a constant supply of protein and their reservoir of honey is still pretty much full. It may not be the first time they ate a pupae or any of the other brood for that matter, but only the first time I caught them.
Keeping:

• Cataulacus granulatus x2
• Camponotus parius
• Odontomachus sp x4
• Pheidole prava x1
• Pseudoneoponera sp x1

SolenopsisKeeper
Posts: 2402
Joined: Sun Dec 12, 2021 11:41 am
Location: United States, Florida

Re: I need help with my Camponotus parius colony.

Post: # 95397Post SolenopsisKeeper
Wed Aug 03, 2022 11:30 pm

JaydenScheepers wrote:
Wed Aug 03, 2022 10:33 pm
The queen's gaster shrunk, is this normal? Maybe it's the periodic break from egg laying I've heard about. Yesterday I caught the workers eating a pupae, they eat little if anything I put in the out world. They have a constant supply of protein and their reservoir of honey is still pretty much full. It may not be the first time they ate a pupae or any of the other brood for that matter, but only the first time I caught them.
Your colony is about the size when they stop using the queen as a replete. It could be an egg laying break though
When you accidentally reply to yourself…

JaydenScheepers
Posts: 358
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2022 10:14 am
Location: Phuket

Re: I need help with my Camponotus parius colony.

Post: # 95399Post JaydenScheepers
Wed Aug 03, 2022 11:53 pm

SolenopsisKeeper wrote:
Wed Aug 03, 2022 11:30 pm
JaydenScheepers wrote:
Wed Aug 03, 2022 10:33 pm
The queen's gaster shrunk, is this normal? Maybe it's the periodic break from egg laying I've heard about. Yesterday I caught the workers eating a pupae, they eat little if anything I put in the out world. They have a constant supply of protein and their reservoir of honey is still pretty much full. It may not be the first time they ate a pupae or any of the other brood for that matter, but only the first time I caught them.
Your colony is about the size when they stop using the queen as a replete. It could be an egg laying break though
Oh, so they use may use queens as repletes? I did not know that.
Keeping:

• Cataulacus granulatus x2
• Camponotus parius
• Odontomachus sp x4
• Pheidole prava x1
• Pseudoneoponera sp x1

SolenopsisKeeper
Posts: 2402
Joined: Sun Dec 12, 2021 11:41 am
Location: United States, Florida

Re: I need help with my Camponotus parius colony.

Post: # 95402Post SolenopsisKeeper
Thu Aug 04, 2022 12:01 am

JaydenScheepers wrote:
Wed Aug 03, 2022 11:53 pm
SolenopsisKeeper wrote:
Wed Aug 03, 2022 11:30 pm
JaydenScheepers wrote:
Wed Aug 03, 2022 10:33 pm
The queen's gaster shrunk, is this normal? Maybe it's the periodic break from egg laying I've heard about. Yesterday I caught the workers eating a pupae, they eat little if anything I put in the out world. They have a constant supply of protein and their reservoir of honey is still pretty much full. It may not be the first time they ate a pupae or any of the other brood for that matter, but only the first time I caught them.
Your colony is about the size when they stop using the queen as a replete. It could be an egg laying break though
Oh, so they use may use queens as repletes? I did not know that.
Yes, especially Camponotus
When you accidentally reply to yourself…

JaydenScheepers
Posts: 358
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2022 10:14 am
Location: Phuket

Re: I need help with my Camponotus parius colony.

Post: # 95404Post JaydenScheepers
Thu Aug 04, 2022 12:03 am

I learn something new every day
Keeping:

• Cataulacus granulatus x2
• Camponotus parius
• Odontomachus sp x4
• Pheidole prava x1
• Pseudoneoponera sp x1

JaydenScheepers
Posts: 358
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2022 10:14 am
Location: Phuket

Re: I need help with my Camponotus parius colony.

Post: # 95405Post JaydenScheepers
Thu Aug 04, 2022 12:04 am

It would be nice to be able to communicate to our ant colonies.
Keeping:

• Cataulacus granulatus x2
• Camponotus parius
• Odontomachus sp x4
• Pheidole prava x1
• Pseudoneoponera sp x1

JaydenScheepers
Posts: 358
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2022 10:14 am
Location: Phuket

Re: I need help with my Camponotus parius colony.

Post: # 95744Post JaydenScheepers
Sat Aug 13, 2022 6:43 am

SolenopsisKeeper wrote:
Tue Jul 26, 2022 9:22 am
JaydenScheepers wrote:
Tue Jul 26, 2022 1:46 am
Do you make sugar water just by mixing sugar into boiling water? And if so are there any ways I can make it more nutritious for my ants.
You don’t need to boil. Just mix sugar and water until it dissolves.

Here is this written by myrmecologist
“ A completely defined synthetic diet for ants has been invented by Ettershank (1967). Diets and several mass culturing techniques for various ant species have been reviewed by Carney (1970). We employ the Bhatkar diet (Bhatkar and Whitcomb, 1970), which is prepared as follows:

Ingredients: l egg 62 ml honey 1 gm vitamins 1 gm minerals and salts 5 gm agar 500 ml water

Dissolve the agar in 250 ml boiling water. Let cool. Mix 250 ml water, honey, vitamins, minerals and egg until smooth with egg beater. Add to this mixture, stirring constantly, the agar solution. Pour into petri dishes to set (0.5 to l cm deep). Store in refrigerator. The concoction fills the bottoms of 15-cm diameter petri dishes, and is jelly-like in consistency.

Most insectivorous ant species thrive on this diet when fed three times weekly along with fragments of freshly killed insects, such as mealworms (Tenebrio), cockroaches (Nauphoeta), and crickets offered in small quantities. If the ants are also predators, they do especially well when allowed access to bottles containing Drosophila cultures, preferably flightless mutants. Alternatively, the Drosophila adults can be frozen and sprinkled onto the foraging arenas for the ants to discover”

Drosophila is fruit flies btw

This book is a very good resource on antwiki. I recommend skimming through bits of it. Much of my knowledge comes from it or other Antkeepers

https://www.antwiki.org/wiki/The_Ants_Chapter_20
I never heard of agar before.
Keeping:

• Cataulacus granulatus x2
• Camponotus parius
• Odontomachus sp x4
• Pheidole prava x1
• Pseudoneoponera sp x1

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