Camponotus Barbaricus hibernation experience

[JoeHostile1]

I think 15C is too warm for hibernation. I hibernate at 10C and was thinking of making that 8C this year.

[pvfsm1]

I am a total newbie here but my first queen (i caught her this summer) is also a camponotus barbaricus.
I'm also trying to read all about this species, I've read people saying they can go without hibernation, others claiming they need 4 months at 5ºC.
What i can tell you is this, the species exist in Portugal, Spain, Morrocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Sicily and southern France, it is a from a temperate climate but a temperate climate that is much warmer than other temperate climates.
In southern Portugal where I caught my queen temperatures this week are still around 25ºC during the day, 17ºC by night, and there are ants outside all over the place... so I'm waiting until the middle of November maybe and have a shorter hibernation.
Also I believe that there is no need to drop the temperature to bellow 10ºC as the temperature drops bellow 10ºC here only during nightime and is almost always higher than that during the day even in January.

[pvfsm1]

I am a newbie too, so i just know what i read in the forums!
I read that if they start being less active or if the larvae don't turn into pupae for too long then that is an indication that it is time to hibernate.
I only have 5 workers (nurses) and 4-5 larvae, maybe also some hidden eggs.
I have no heating for them, they were kept until now in normal room temperature, warmer in hot days cooler in the night or when it rains.
I think I'm going to buy a heat lamp soon to help them develop faster, but maybe not use it until after the hibernation.

[JoeHostile1]

I think 15C is too warm for hibernation. I hibernate at 10C and was thinking of making that 8C this year.

Thanks for the temperature advice.

How do you "see" that your ants are ready for hibernation ?

I should point out I live in Canada. In the wild Outside it gradually gets colder and colder and this tells the ants to stop laying eggs or do whatever they need to do to prepare for hibernation. That’s how they know winter is coming. They also probably go through a bunch of freeze thaw cycles. So at night it gets so cold they can barely move and in the day when it warms up they are able to go about their activities.

What I do to prepare them for hibernation is to slowly cool them over a period of a few weeks to try and somewhat mimic what would happen outside. Inside my house they are subject to a temperature change because in the summer it can get up to like 27C inside my house. But now it’s freezing out and my house is at 20C. So they probably already know that summer is over.

Now on November 01, I will put them all in my wine cooler and set the temperature at 15C. I will leave them in there like that for about 10 days. Then I will set it to 10C. Is any of that necessary? Not sure, but during the 10 days at 15C I’m sure the queens will stop laying eggs. And perhaps the colony will eat any eggs they currently have so they don’t spoil during the winter. I then hibernate them for 5 months at 10C because that corresponds with the winter where I live.

Last year I didn’t hibernate a Messor colony I have because I thought that species didn’t need hibernation. Well that colony didn’t produce a single worker the entire winter. In fact it was a net loss of workers because workers were dying from old age and not being replaced. So the colony ended the winter with less workers than it had at the beginning. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was happening to the colony. I thought they were in the process of Dying even though I was meeting all their requirements for survival. It wasn’t until summer started and their population exploded that I realized they were trying to hibernate and that’s why they didn’t produce workers.