105 replies to this topic

[OhNoNotAgain]

2020.5.4

Well, so all my other surviving colonies figure out dried bloodworms are food. Except of course these picky eaters. Number of workers really seems to make a huge difference. (The more workers, the more they figure out different things are food.)

 

I even put in a tiny little bowl of bloodworm soup. Which got ignored. I refreshed their THA ant nectar container and dropped some sugar water into the bloodworm soup and I'll hope that attracts one of the workers.

 

They are down to 3 ... just THREE ... workers and a small brood pile. I think one of the workers might be this year's, and the other two are foraging (rather, going into the outworld and failing to forage) so I think they are last year's crop.

 

I have no flies for them right now so I really hope they figure out the dried or soupy bloodworms. Either one.

 

A week or two ago I dropped into the nest a tiny piece of apple with sugar crystals stuck to it. The workers were really interested in it. I may have to do that again if they refuse to figure out the THA ant nectar feeder.

Edited by OhNoNotAgain, May 4 2020 - 10:06 PM.

[TheAntGuy]

Is any of the brood at the larval stage? Generally the colony won't eat lots of protein unless they have larvae.

[OhNoNotAgain]

Is any of the brood at the larval stage? Generally the colony won't eat lots of protein unless they have larvae.

Yeah it's weird because they had one or two larger larvae, but now they have only one or two small larvae and a tiny egg (?) pile. I'm not sure what happened to the largest larva. Do salsabeans cocoon? I've yet to see a cocoon.

[TheAntGuy]

yeah sansabeanus should cocoon. All camponotus do.

[OhNoNotAgain]

Sooooooo today I discovered little white mites crawling allllll over the mini-hearth glass. Aside from freaking out, I wiped it down several times. Every time I wiped it, a few more mites would come out and trek across the glass. (Thankfully with only 3 workers, most of whom stick near the brood, there's a lower risk of squishing anyone when the glass goes back on. I couldn't do this with my larger colonies.)

 

I'm going to have to restart my fruit fly colonies because I suspect they are the source of the mites. (Yes, I kept trying to feed the salsas fruit flies, which they still continue to ignore. And they've ignored cut up mealworm as well as oozing fly pupae. Sigh.)

 

Queen and three workers and mini brood still about the same. For some reason the mini-hearth doesn't seem to be getting warm, either, which is weird as they are on the same seedling heating mat being used by two successful colonies. I'm going to have to move the heating mat around.

Edited by OhNoNotAgain, May 15 2020 - 3:31 PM.

[OhNoNotAgain]

2020.5.16

I've rinsed the glass off soooo many times and every time there are more mites that crawl out. I think I've dented their population but I'm not sure.

I also tried giving the salsabeans mealworm (ignored), lamb (possibly ignored), shrimp (possibly ignored). My other colonies that received those same things went nuts for them.

 

I also tried to redo my fruit fly colonies but I'm not sure the fruit fly larvae will survive. The rest went into the freezer because mites.

 

I thought about cutting up a dubia for them but I had this big problem that I picked up a young dubia nymph and it was too cute to kill.        

Edited by OhNoNotAgain, May 16 2020 - 7:19 AM.

[ANTdrew]

Dang. This species hardly seems worth it.

[OhNoNotAgain]

Dang. This species hardly seems worth it.

I'm sure it's just my colony. But I love how aggressive this queen is. I mean she's got the most personality of all the queens.

I read some material from Nurbs that says they don't like it too warm, but last year they didn't get heat and they still didn't grow. So I'm just not sure what is going on. I may have screwed up their diapause, even though they were off heat for months.

[NickAnter]

Nurbs has big colonies of them.

[OhNoNotAgain]

2020.5.26

Welllllllll my sucky antkeeping noobishness is embarrassing but I'll update in case it helps anyone else.

 

I THINK the queen's been eating her largest pupae. It explains why I would see a large pupa and then it would seem to shrink ... basically the oldest biggest pupa was probably disappearing.

 

And.

 

A couple days ago I was still finding mites in the mini-hearth, despite washing the window every day, multiple times a day. Remembering Nurbs talking about using an XL mini-hearth, I dug out the OLD OLD fake mini-hearth I had them in LAST YEAR. The one with peeling paint and such. This time I fashioned a fake nestmate so I thought I had the hydration problem figured out. It is bigger than a mini-hearth.

 

Then I forcibly moved the queen and her last 3 workers to the mini-hearth fake. I tried to save the brood but I think they abandoned it. I put a container of ant nectar IN the nest and put in half a fly pupa and other such things.

 

I washed the mini-hearth in things like H2O2 and vinegar and then put it in the freezer. So tired of mites.

 

Today in the fake mini-hearth I found one of the workers dead and another mostly dead.

I have NO idea why. They lived in that thing last year for weeks.

I will say it smelled bad. Maybe some chemical change? Maybe something grew in it while it was in the garage? I don't know. Anyway....

 

So much for that idea.

 

Today I evicted the poor queen and her last lonely worker and put them into a test tube.

 

I will set up a plastic outworld for them asap so they can get sugar water and protein.

Edited by OhNoNotAgain, May 26 2020 - 10:10 PM.

[OhNoNotAgain]

2020.5.29

The queen and her last worker are still in a test tube. I opened up the tube in a tub and put some a THA ant nectar dispenser at the entrance, plus put a piece of dead fly in the test tube (ignored, except when I pushed it too close the queen sprayed it).

 

The first night the queen laid two eggs. Today there were a few more eggs. So she has a small brood pile again, about the size of the one she had before - of course, missing the largest larva though.

[OhNoNotAgain]

2020.6.16

A couple days ago I received a new Camponotus sansabeanus queen. I learn so much by having multiple samples of the same species. I'm hoping I do better with this one.

 

Salsaqueen1 (2nd season) still has the 1 surviving worker and ... maybe 2 eggs/larvae. She acts uninterested in food (fly pupa). I have seen her worker sipping byFormica Summer Honeysuckle/Sunburst though.

 

Salsaqueen2 (1st season) has a small pile of pupae and 1 nanitic. I gave her a fly pupa last night on a halved plastic straw and I think she was drinking fluid from it. 

Today I opened the tube, Velcroed it to a Daiso tub, took out the fly, and gave them a drop of byFormica Summer Honeysuckle nectar on the half straw and stuck it into the tube. The nanitic zoomed in on it and drank rapidly (they seem to drink SO much faster than Veromessors) and within minutes the queen homed in on the drop of nectar and was sucking it down, too.

 

I think I must have really screwed up Salsa1's diapause or something. This year I will try to get them into the garage sooner ... I might even consider putting them outside NOT in the garage, in a protected area (have to find one lol... not many places like that), so they get exposed to cooler temps.

[OhNoNotAgain]

Just had to add this funny anecdote.

I checked on Salsa2 and found the nanitic with her head buried in the drop of nectar again. She just sat there unmoving and I suddenly got worried she was drowning.

I grabbed the tweezers and moved the straw piece with the drop, and the nanitic FREAKED and ran back into the tube to her mother.

Like "MOM I JUST GOT SO SCARED THE GROUND MOVED OMG MOMMMYYYYY!!!!" 

Edited by OhNoNotAgain, June 16 2020 - 8:31 PM.

[ANTdrew]

Just had to add this funny anecdote.
I checked on Salsa2 and found the nanitic with her head buried in the drop of nectar again. She just sat there unmoving and I suddenly got worried she was drowning.
I grabbed the tweezers and moved the straw piece with the drop, and the nanitic FREAKED and ran back into the tube to her mother.
Like "MOM I JUST GOT SO SCARED THE GROUND MOVED OMG MOMMMYYYYY!!!!"

Camponotus are so frickin’ weird.

[OhNoNotAgain]

2020.6.29 

Well, just got a shipment of two C. vicinus (lowland) queens. They were apparently caught in Norcal, the Gridley area, in April. They are this lovely dark brown/black color. Ironically I think these vicinus are more Coca-Cola-colored than actual quercicolas photos I've seen (commonly referred to as "colas"). C. vicinus lowland queens are (according to rumor) slightly smaller than highland/high altitude and supposedly don't need winter temps as cold as high altitude queens. In other words, I was hoping these guys would not need a wine cooler; however, the fact Gridley is pretty far north makes me wonder if they will need a wine cooler after all.

 

One queen has at least 4 nanitics; the other apparently had a mishap and lost her brood and had to start over. She does have a small brood pile.

 

I think I will add vicinus to this journal. So this thread will cover C. sansabeanus and C. vicinus; I will retain the separate journal for C. fragilis (and of course the other non-Camponotus varieties).

 

I will probably stick them in tubs either tonight or tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

[ANTdrew]

Good luck with these.

[OhNoNotAgain]

For anyone wondering about the size of C. sansabeanus queens, I took these photos June 25th, 2020.

They are both about 1.8 cm, just shy of 2cm. The low elevation C. vicinus I have are definitely smaller. (I fed all four Camponotus some fruit flies today, July 4th. No idea if Pickyqueen actually ate any.)

Scale: cm.

 

Old salsa queen (2019's) ("Mean Queen" aka "Picky Queen") with her one surviving worker:

 

Newer salsa queen (2020 crop), with pupae and nanitic. She seems more nervous than the Mean Queen. Anyway:

Edited by OhNoNotAgain, July 4 2020 - 10:28 PM.

[OhNoNotAgain]

2020.7.15

An online friend was giving away ants so here's my new list of Camponotus ants, in total, with updates.

 

C. fragilis is in its own journal.

 

C. sansabeanus 1: Her last worker died!  I put in 2 little brood from C. sansabeanus 2 and what happened? Mean Queen freaked out, ran out of her tube, and is trying to escape the tub.

 

C. sansabeanus 2: Has nanitics and brood. I adjusted their cotton and accidentally caused some minor flooding. The nanitics didn't seem very fast on the uptake and were not good at rescuing brood. This is when I took a couple little ones to give to C. sansa 1, who smelled the brood and ran off screaming.

 

C. vicinus (low) 1: Gave them a fruit fly. They freaked out, killed it, kept killing it, sprayed more, attacked more, bit it, sprayed more, freaked more, etc.

 

C. vicinus (low) 2: The queen who lost her brood. She is thin but faithfully tending her brood. One very small pupa and a smaller larva.

 

NEW ANTS:

 

C. vicinus (bi-color) orphan: Arrived with queen dead  Beautiful BIG bi-color vicinus with a light thorax (instead of light gaster). I'm SO bummed the queen was dead. She leaves behind a healthy nanitic and some brood.

 

C. semitestaceous "dud"? queen: This is a queen who is suspected to be a dud. She looks like a small sansabeanus, with dark head and thorax and lighter colored gaster. Arrived with 2-3 little eggs that she is definitely NOT taking care of. Based on photo, apparently she's gotten quite thin.

 

Crazy experiment with vicinus orphan and semi-dud: I put the C. vicinus orphan tube and C. semi-dud queen in the same tub, open.

 

C. quercicola: HUGE big black-ish queen. She looks bigger than my sansabeanus queens. She came with a bunch of healthy looking huge nanitics and brood. I offered them some ant nectar and some bloodworms soaking in ant nectar and they freaked just a bit, sipped nectar, and then seemed to ignore it.

 

(And I got 1 Liometopum occidentale colony and I'm running a weird experiment on my Prenolepis, but those are stories for different journals.)

 

Will add photos soon.

Edited by OhNoNotAgain, July 15 2020 - 10:24 PM.

[TechAnt]

Just a thought, instead of the journal name you have right now. Perhaps all it OhNoNotAgain’s Campontous Journal / OhNoNotAgain’s Camponotus species Journal. Something like that, as the name is quite long if I have to say.

[OhNoNotAgain]

Just a thought, instead of the journal name you have right now. Perhaps all it OhNoNotAgain’s Campontous Journal / OhNoNotAgain’s Camponotus species Journal. Something like that, as the name is quite long if I have to say.

 

Yeah depending on what happens I was thinking of changing it to:

 

OhNoNotAgain's Doomed Camponotus League

 

and if they survive somehow and some of them actually thrive, it could be

 

OhNoNotAgain's Camponotus League of Doom