Update 7-21-20
Today is going to be an update on ALL of my vicinus colonies. This includes a few colonies that I got from other people, and some Camponotus "vicinus" colonies. Today was sugar day, and I fed all of them some perky pet nectar. That's why you'll see some of them have red gasters
Black C. vicinus:
This colony currently has 4 workers, but it also has a lot of brood! Stoked for new workers
This was a colony that I got from Vern during one of his giveaways. They're doing really well. They only had 2 workers when I got them, but now they're on the verge of catching up to my other black vicinus colonies. They have 7 workers.
These two colonies have 2 and 3 workers respectively. They both only have small brood currently.
This is a 5 worker colony that has barely any brood.
These two next colonies have 4 workers each. They don't have that much brood (only eggs), but hopefully they'll get more later on.
This colony only recently moved back into their test tube. Before that, they found a tiny spot right at the edge of their water tube to live in. They have 7 workers.
This was my fastest growing colony, and it is going to be the first among the black vicinus to reach 8 workers.
Orange Camponotus vicinus:
I only recently got these orange C. vicinus. I say orange, but only the gasters of the queens and the mesosoma of the workers are actually orange. I really like how the yellows hairs stand out against their gasters. These seem to be faster growing compared to the black C. vicinus that I have.
I got these two colonies from cocdeshijie in a trade. They both have around 8 workers right now. You can see a callow in the first picture. It's thorax is still a yellow dirt brown color, but it becomes more rich and turns auburn once their exoskeletons harden.
This third orange C. vicinus colony was from Pogoqueen. They have a lot of larvae and only 2 workers. These look extremely similar to the vicinus I got from Coc, which is why I put them in the same category. It does seem like the queen is slightly smaller compared to the other two, but the only other differences I can spot are that the vicinus from Coc have darker and more defined "stockings" on their legs.
I'm pretty sure this last colony isn't actually vicinus. It's likely another species that was accidentally mistaken for vicinus. This seems to resemble the semitestaceus that I got from nurbs. You can see, even from this blurry picture, that the head is a lot shinier compared to all my other vicinus colonies. I got her from vern with 2 other queens. However, it seemed that during shipment, the queens all got injured. Since this was the least injured queen of them all (the other ones ended up dying), I separated her from the other queens, and gave her all their brood. Since it seemed likely she would overwork herself trying to care for the brood, I donated a semitestaceus pupa to her, which she readily accepted. The worker you see there is actually a semitestaceus worker. I think there may have also been some semitestaceus larvae (which are probably now among the pupae). Since she has not had any workers yet, I'm curious what they will look like. In the meantime, this semitestaceus worker is actually doing pretty well living with the queen.