The workers will eventually remove the dead workers in a day or two. I was the same with my camponotus colony. Also, what food did ypu give them? Do the other workers have plump gasters? How big are the larvae? If they relatively huge then they won't really need to eat since they'll be turning into the dormant pupal stage.
Honey water mixture in a soaked cotton ball, then refined pure honey but I don't think they touched it.
Yesterday sugar water mixture in a soaked cotton ball, and a small piece egg omlet
I never see them eat, they most likely do it when I'm asleep,
since this morning I saw a piece of ant leg sitting on the sugar water cotton, and the egg omlet looks a bit eaten.
The workers do look kinda plump.
They seem to use sticky surfaces as rubbish dumps, I noticed the same thing when I had honey smeared on a foil,
a worker picked up a small round object (maybe a gastor shell from a dead worker) and put it on the foil.
So I'll try that in an outworld when the time comes, for easy cleaning.
The larvae are quite small, but getting bigger quite fast, they were more like eggs a day ago.
I can see a dark area inside them.
There is always a worker sitting on top of them
The queen/workers do not mind light at all, I have my test tube half covered, and the queen sits in the lit areas
But my room is dimly lit.
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I bought some raw pure honey and raw sugar today, so I'll see how much they enjoy it.
On the way back home I stopped off a local tennis court, that is the start of a local bush trail here in East Lindfield, Sydney
Walked about 100m to some ant nests on the side of the trail, dropped a bit of raw honey into a big ant nest opening, and straight away some fairly large reddish/orange ants inspected the honey and started eating it
Not sure on the species, I've never seen them before, but they really liked and about 15 more came out, as the honey soaked into the soil.
And to the left I saw a green headed ant, Rhytidoponera Metallica, the first time I have seen one in person!
It too enjoyed the raw honey, and it went back to it's nest, which is only 2 feet away from the above ants.
I put some honey in front of it, and only 2 ants came out, maybe a new colony. They seem to have good eye sight and are fairly timid and darty, jumping back into the nest whenever I get too close.
I've seen bull ants here before, near these nests, but none showed up today
There were a few other type of ants nearby as well, trails and workers foraging
I can imagine some ant fights in the future as these colonies get bigger
Edited by CoolColJ, February 23 2018 - 7:54 PM.