C. noveboracensis and T. spE: My first dive into ant keeping

[sartwell90]

Good news everyone!

This afternoon a worker was successfully eclosed, followed by a couple hours of being pestered by her sisters while they cleaned her off. I find the eclosing process so interesting and will be happy to share with you video of the process soon. It is especially fun to watch how clumsy these new ants are and how much they seem to be annoyed by the necessary attention given to them when they are getting their pupal casing cleaned off.

In other news, I gave the winged Tetramorium queen a more natural and small setup and within a day of being introduced to this non-test tube. She vanished! I have since spotted her claustral chamber and her wings laying at the surface. It appears she still needed some kind of environmental queues to start the nesting part of her adventure. She will be the only of my queens to be completely hidden from me until workers arrive - assuming she is fertile.

The other Tetramorium queen that you have been getting regular updates on now has a huge ball of eggs and larvae. I can no longer successfully count the ball but it is easily over 50 eggs. No workers yet and no pupae that I have seen, but later this week - based on reported maturation rates of this species - we should be seeing some pupae being formed. She is much smaller, so it might be difficult to spot. Also, since she doesn't have her first workers she is still locked away in a dark box, once her first workers are eclosed and have spent some time maturing - she will be fed in a tubs and tubes setup followed by a low-stress move into a different test tube, and then into a test tube portal setup similar to The Carpenters. I will have to take additional precautions due to my expectations that Tetramorium will be more difficult to contain.

Even more good news! The future outworld homes for the 3 colonies will be in progress soon, it will be a long while yet before The Carpenters will be ready to be given a larger outworld. But I have a feeling once I start seeing Tetramorium workers, their colony will be expanding rapidly, and they will be ready for an outworld much sooner.

Finally, the lone surviving worker from the first long-since-passed C. novaeboracensis queen is still healthy and is being taking care of like a princess. She has been helping me test food (ie. I found some honey sticks at my local store). In a way she is my canary, to make sure that new things are safe for my other colonies. I am not sure how long workers of this species typically live, but as I've said before, I'll care for her until that time comes - and in the mean time she will help ensure the health and safety of my other ants. What a wonderful lone warrior.

[sartwell90]

T. spE


C. novaeboracensis

[Jessewitt]

I have a test tube set up with only cotton and water in it. There’s a queen and about 20 workers. Out of no where some type of small beatle about the size of the ants showed up. I wonder what it is and where it came from

[Hawkeye]

I have a test tube set up with only cotton and water in it. There’s a queen and about 20 workers. Out of no where some type of small beatle about the size of the ants showed up. I wonder what it is and where it came from

Curious, is it possible you fed them an insect which might have carried an egg on its body?

[Jessewitt]

I don’t usually give any insects to the ones in the test tubes. Whatever it was I left it in there. They are fire ants so I don’t thing it’s a danger to them. I was kinda hoping it was one of those creatures that shares the honey like substance with them. I forgot what they were called

[Jessewitt]

Sorry to intrude on your post lol idk how to make my own

[Jessewitt]

Another theory is this... I have used these same test tubes for many many ants for years. Whatever it is could have came from an old set up I had in there

[Hawkeye]

I don’t usually give any insects to the ones in the test tubes. Whatever it was I left it in there. They are fire ants so I don’t thing it’s a danger to them. I was kinda hoping it was one of those creatures that shares the honey like substance with them. I forgot what they were called

Aphids? They need plant sap to survive...

[Hawkeye]

Sorry to intrude on your post lol idk how to make my own

Select a general category, then post a new topic

[sartwell90]

I don’t usually give any insects to the ones in the test tubes. Whatever it was I left it in there. They are fire ants so I don’t thing it’s a danger to them. I was kinda hoping it was one of those creatures that shares the honey like substance with them. I forgot what they were called

I would find it unlikely that it is an aphid, mealybug or other ant cow - especially being described as a beetle-like critter. If it were, it wouldn't produce any honeydew or live for very long without being able to feed on the nutritious juices in the phloem of live plants. Even if it is unlikely to be an issue to your fire ants, it's good to keep any young colonies environment as sterile as possible.

Sorry to intrude on your post lol idk how to make my own

Not a problem at all sir, but Hawkeye's above post should help.

Select a general category, then post a new topic

Thank you my awesome Camponotus friend for the back up.

In other other news, my newest video covering my Camponotus novaeboracensis colony is uploaded and ready to rock. I am super proud of how it turned out, several days in the making but... well you should just check it out for yourself.

https://youtu.be/baNPxyMZS4E So excited, and I hope that each update is better than the last!