I received three Odontomachus haematodus queens from fellow Floridian and member of Formiculture Aaron567, of the three queens two are founding together and the third queen will be going it alone, and this journal will be about her. So I received this queen towards the beginning of July, and she arrived with a few eggs and laid a few more just days after getting to me.
July 9th - A short clip that shows her large clutch of eggs just days after arriving, at this point, I had her in only a test tube with some dirt I added. I also wrapped a strip of red transparency paper and slid it over the tube covering the portion closest to the cotton, hoping to give her an area in her tube where light wouldn't both her much. In the next two weeks, I nixed the idea of keeping her in just the test tube and placed her tube inside a small acrylic boxbox container which I added substrate and springtails to. The queen immediately started bringing in
August 9th - Over the next few weeks the queen brought in the substrate and created a wall of dirt at the edge of the red cover, and three of her larvae have grown steadily to some pretty big sizes. Up to this point, I have been feeding her cut up bits of super worm and freeze-dried Hikari freeze-dried bloodworms which her and the larvae seem to decimate pretty rapidly.
August 12th - So I decided to check on this queen earlier this morning before heading out to work and am happy to report one of the three large larvae has pupated, and she also seems now to have a third egg. I'm hoping the other two larvae pupate soon as well and that she successfully ecloses her first worker within the coming weeks.
Edited by WanderAnts, August 12 2019 - 5:56 PM.
