20 replies to this topic

[dspdrew]

12-12-2012
 
I found this Crematogaster sp. queen in Southern California, November 12th 2012, living along side a colony of Tapinoma sessile inside a rotted log I broke open.
Original queen ID post: http://antfarm.yuku.com/topic/15273
 

 

 

Queen

 

 

 

 

 

Worker

 

 

 

 
 
Update 12-27-2012
 
This queen is continuing to lay more eggs and her larvae are getting larger. Her abdomen has real noticeable stripes now that were not showing before, so I'm not sure if it's just more stretched out or what. I have never seen her eat anything, but I still continue to give her food, usually a smashed up cricket or termite in a drop of honey.
 
 
Update 1-10-2013
 
Well I watched a while longer than usual this time after giving her food, and after touching it with her antennae and then cleaning them off about seven times, she finally stuck her face right down in the honey so I have definitely seen her eat now. She actually has I think, five pupae and they are still pretty white. I noticed while she was eating, off and on her abdomen would make a throbbing motion. I have seen other ants do this a lot too when disturbed, especially fire ants and harvester ants.
 
 
Update 1-21-2013
 
She finally has some workers now, three of them eclosed over the weekend.

 

 

 

 

 
 
Update 2-4-2013
 
So far this colony got up to 5 workers with lots of eggs, larvae, and two pupae at the moment, but now is down to 4 workers. I don't know if one of the workers died or was killed, because I found the rest of them and the queen passing around the abdomen of one of the worker ants. I noticed it's head laying there a little ways away.
 
 
Update 4-11-2013
 
I just moved them into a small firebrick formicarium I built in kind of a hurry. Firebrick is a lot like Ytong, only a lot more porous. There are about 27 workers in this colony now, so I wanted to get them out of the test tube. This morning I dropped the test tube in the outworld, and placed a 60 watt bulb over them, and by the time I got home from work, they were all moved in already. I left the mouth of the test tube pretty close to the entrance of the nest so it wasn't hard for them to find. I was actually watching them from work with a webcam I have set up, but I guess I missed the actual move that I was hoping to see. Anyways, here's a few pictures of the quick low-budget formicarium I built and my Crematogaster colony. I am planning to build a bigger, much better Ytong formicarium for them later after I finish a few other more urgent projects of mine.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[dspdrew]

Update 4-14-2013

 

All these ants right now pretty much just stay in the nest and don't come out much after filling up on lots of honey-water, but I did see them do something weird this morning. One of them was carrying another ant out of the nest as if it was dead, but I could see it wasn't dead because it was moving. It finally found a place to drop it off, and did, but soon after, this ant got up and started walking around like it was just fine. Eventually it found its way back into the nest. Why do they do that?

[dspdrew]

Update 8-4-2013

 

This colony is still growing very slow. Since this summer has felt much more like winter here, I put a heating pad underneath their formicarium to see if the brood develop any faster. It looks like there were finally a few new workers that just recently eclosed, and obviously a lot more to come.

 

[Mercutia]

Can you show me the way you water it? I'm thinking of stealing this idea in terms of your AAC. I still have no idea what to do with mine.

[dspdrew]

Can you show me the way you water it? I'm thinking of stealing this idea in terms of your AAC. I still have no idea what to do with mine.

 

 

 

Does that answer your question?

[Mercutia]

Ohhhh okay. So you only fill it to a certain level.

[dspdrew]

Yeah, otherwise it would fill up the ants chambers. To keep that from happening, I made that black piece of plastic in the back only go up to a certain height.

[Crystals]

Where did you find your fire brick?  Is it an actual clay fire brick?

The only so called "Fire bricks" i can find up here are just straight cement.

 

I like the outworld.

[dspdrew]

I'm really not sure what it's made from, but I thought it was clay or something dug up. I used the soft type called K-23. This here (http://www.axner.com...firebricks.aspx) is the same type I used.

[dspdrew]

Update 10-20-2013

The colony finally has a new generation of workers coming, you can see tons of new eggs. Also, it looks like the latest workers are full sized now.
 

 

 

 

[dspdrew]

Update 2-24-2014

This colony just doesn't seem to grow very big at all, but there is always plenty brood. This species might just normally have really small colonies, but since I have never been able to ID them, I won't really know. Anyways, I decided to move them back into a test tube, so I laid a freshly setup test tube in the out world, and put a light right on them. I hadn't added water to the nest for about a week after it went dry, so I figured it couldn't be too long before they moved. Two weeks went by, and today I looked at the nest and it was empty. It was pretty obvious where they moved to, and sure enough, there they were, all inside the test tube.

[123LordOfAnts123]

update?

[Gregory2455]

update?

[Gregory2455]

Where can you get firebrick in Southern California?

[dspdrew]

At ceramic supply stores.

[Gregory2455]

Some of these journals, you haven't updated since February... Major cliff hangar, did they die?

[Myrmicinae]

Some of these journals, you haven't updated since February... Major cliff hangar, did they die?

I think he just has too many ants to keep track of. I have enough trouble with six colonies.

Edited by Myrmicinae, September 2 2014 - 8:25 PM.

[dspdrew]

Myrmicinae's right haha. These are all alive still. I just found a bunch more Crematogaster that all turned out to be fertile, so I have to try my best to ID and organize them before making/updating my Crematogaster journals. Plus at this time of the year, there may still be more additions.

[dspdrew]

Update 10-2-2014

This colony's worker count slowly dropped until there was only one left, and then today the queen finally died.

[Gregory2455]

And she was one of the most beautiful queens I have ever seen... Sorry for your loss Drew.