7 replies to this topic

[CheetoLord02]

On April 3rd 2020 I went out to experience the first Prenolepis flights of the year, and while catching 2 of those, I also caught a few Lasius speculiventris queens. While I was out I grabbed a few dozen Lasius americanus workers to serve as hosts for my new parasite queens. I don't have many pics of the introduction, but knowing that these queens do significantly better with more workers, over the course of a few hours I gave all 30 or so host workers to one queen. At first the hosts would sit all the way at the other side of the tube, but they accepted her one by one and made their way over to the queen. A significant amount died in this process from skirmishes with the queen, so now the colony is down to about 20 or so hosts.

 

A few days after introduction, it was time for their first protein. I had given them a few drops of honey before just to make sure they were fed, but it was time to get some egg-laying action. As I was feeding them the cricket that I chose for their meal, I actually noticed a pair of eggs!

 

Shortly after feeding, the queen decided to churn out a pretty sizable batch of eggs, around 20-30 or so!

 

After a handful more feedings, the egg pile is now closing in on a hundred. These queens are absolute egg laying machines. Too bad the brood develops extremely slowly. It's been well over a week and still no larvae to speak for. 

 

It'll be interesting to see the development from here. Supposedly the introduction is the hardest part, so if that's the case I suppose I'm very lucky! I'll make sure to keep this updated with changes from here on out.

Edited by CheetoLord02, September 30 2020 - 12:40 AM.

[ANTdrew]

Nice work! My Lasius cf claviger queen has done squat diddly after a month with host workers. She’s still winged, too, so she may not be mated.
Lasius eggs develop ridiculously slow in any case.

Edited by ANTdrew, April 26 2020 - 5:58 AM.

[RushmoreAnts]

Tell me about it. It took my neoniger eggs three weeks to hatch, and they were heated.

[CheetoLord02]

We have larvae! Only took like, 3 weeks. Now the one in the picture is one of a handful of 2nd instar larvae, meaning they've been in the colony for a decent amount of time with me not realizing. In one of the pictures you can even see a tiny 1st instar larva amidst the egg pile. I know their larval stage is the longest, so it'll probably be another 4 weeks or so until I see pupae.

 I also got 3 additional speculiventris queens introduced to their own groups of host workers, but none have laid yet. I probably won't cover them here, but I might cover an Aphaenogaster tennesseensis queen that I've gotten introduced to hosts of her own, if she ends up being successful.

[RushmoreAnts]

How can you tell it’s speculiventris? They’re practically identical to aphidicola.

[CheetoLord02]

I totally forgot about this journal!

Unfortunately this colony didn't make it. The hosts kept prematurely dying, and even after a boost with even more americanus brood they still were only able to raise 1 biological worker. The colony died shortly after that. I think I just had a bad run.

Also, this queen was definitely aphidicola and not speculiventris, lol

[KitsAntVa]

Sorry to hear that and they were doing so good to. Do you think if i got a lasius neoniger queen and stuck her in the fridge for 2 days and had some claviger workers i could introduce them by putting 5 sleeping claviger workers with a sleepy lasius neoniger queen and then putting them back asleep. if this doesn't work i'll try actually lasius neoniger workers and do the same process and backup plan is to get some umbratus cocoons.

[RushmoreAnts]

It seems that either parasites thrive, or they hopelessly crash.