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[Scrixx]

Caught four of these queens while at a firing range. One crawled onto my neck and I freaked out. 

 

July 6, 2017.

Caught four queens.

 

 

August 12, 2017

One queen has three workers, two have one each, the fourth still only has eggs. The fourth might be infertile.

 

Each queen was occasionally fed with pieces of crickets, crushed fish food which they seemed to accept readily, and sugar water.

 

Queen with three workers has on about to eclose and three other pupae.

 

Edited by Scrixx, August 13 2017 - 2:43 PM.

[Scrixx]

September 19, 2017

Lost two to an Argentine ant attack along with many more queens. Read it here.

Two queens left but one may be infertile. She still has no workers.

 

The other queen is thriving though. She now has about 15 workers and a big pile of larvae and pupae. They've been moved from their test tube setup to a small nest inside an out-world. I say small nest but the out-world is big for a small colony. It's bulky and a lot of the space is wasted but there's enough room for a second nest if they need it. The nest is a plaster nest with a plastic cover. Under the wire mesh is a water tower I made but I can also hydrate the nest directly from the sides. I feed them with a container lid with some seeds I collected. 

 

A few hours after moving video:

 

Day 2 after moving. They've already established a trash pile at the top right of the out-world They've also been bringing in dirt by tearing it off the plaster. I think they're trying to cover up the light since I was using piece of cut cardboard to cover the top. There was still light coming in since it's not perfectly flat. 

[Scrixx]

September 27, 2017

 

Welp. This colony has died from an Argentine attack. Really irritated at those ants now. I'll have to build an ant cabinet ASAP.

 

I rescued what I could but the queen killed the surviving workers and then died shortly after.

 

Edited by Scrixx, October 8 2017 - 7:42 PM.