Hello I captured this beauty June 18th, wandering on my back step.
This is a pic of her on day 1.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_2ayU6TTG9DSm5BTlkwMmo4bUlKb0o1Y1BiYi1TcmxGUnVn
Her 1st batch of eggs was 11 in size. Few weeks later she matched that again.
By early Aug, she began hatching out her 1st round of workers, when they hit this point in the pic below I added her to an Omni Nest large. She had hatched around 7 workers then. I fed them on house flies and brown sugar water the entire time since. They looked like this then.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1O1VWdF3c_i1b1Vi8JUnEtFhLeDwfXGCy
Most of the advice suggested I leave her in the tube for the entire 1st season till next spring, I am really glad I moved her sooner and provided her room to grown. She never would have pulled this off if I had left her in her tube till next spring.
As of Sept 15th she has well over 20 workers, roughly 20 larvae and pupae.
Incredibly she just dropped a new batch of eggs, exceeding 40 eggs in this latest batch that is a few days old now.
Even more incredibly her 3rd batch of eggs has begun to hatch, and to my surprise this morning I saw two newly hatched Majors !!!
Camponotus Novaeboracensis from what I have read typically do not produce majors till year 2.5 or even year 3 ??
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1DXdL7OCHGeDi912BA0B0oVuSo0rVRlYj
Or am I wrong and these are just larger workers ??? (new newly hatched majors ? in link above)
Here are some shots of her current brood and egg piles, being tended by workers.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1FGeCUCCApwfUb_xNMyl0swq6atSZ7PeI
https://drive.google.com/open?id=140YphyyLh-ZeTxo6tRv3rKheSH40GBiY
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1TbvYfzWMShrzsVjwY62rkwl53K6y2VO1
How are all your new Campontous colonies doing folks ??
New Camp. Nova. Colony progress, Majors already !! ??
Moderators: ooper01, Trusted User
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Re: New Camp. Nova. Colony progress, Majors already !! ??
What I've found is that Camponotus sp. can produce majors like in your example if there is enough food around. Even though these majors are larger than the normal workers they tend to be quite small for majors. In other words they get bigger as the colony grows and so Camponotus sp. tend to have many sizes for majors. But they are still majors never the less.
Ant-keeper going into his 4th year of loving ants!
Re: New Camp. Nova. Colony progress, Majors already !! ??
That's so awesome
It's nice to seem them thrive...really enjoy watching them advance.
Thank you for the info, and the reply
It's nice to seem them thrive...really enjoy watching them advance.
Thank you for the info, and the reply
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- Joined: Sat Jul 15, 2017 9:45 am
- Location: Luton
Re: New Camp. Nova. Colony progress, Majors already !! ??
Hiya there. I was just curious because I do want to get a polymorphic species of ant but I live in the UK so I'm not sure what to get or even where to look. I did some digging around on the internet but apparently not such ant even lives in the UK.
I would love to have a large ant conoly to keep as I find them amazing to look at but yeah i cant seem to find any information at all about it.
Hope you see this message soon
LM
I would love to have a large ant conoly to keep as I find them amazing to look at but yeah i cant seem to find any information at all about it.
Hope you see this message soon
LM
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