6/6/20
I've been wanting to create an ant journal for the longest time but never had the colonies to back one up. Now I have multiple colonies and am ready to start a journal. Hope you enjoy!
Prenolepis Queens:
I caught all of these 12 queens on April 7th, 2020 and they have all been doing quite well. Each one has a massive pile of brood with the largest having about three pupae. I expect them all to have workers within 1-2 weeks, but they will likely achieve this in less than a week. One of the three queen ones will be given to Antennal_Scrobe and another will be sold. Although this won't be for a good couple months, I thought I'd throw it in just for good measure.
Formica Queen:
I've had multiple Formica queens last year, all with no success at getting nanitics. For some reason, this genus has been nothing but trouble for me. I caught this queen last year around mid-August and have been waiting for her to lay eggs since then. After feeding her a small drop of honey and checking back on her a week later, I found she had finally laid her first batch of eggs! It wasn't a big batch, only three or four, but they are eggs nonetheless! I guess all she needed was a little energy boost to start laying. I'm very excited to see what happens to her next.
Tetramorium Immigran:
I received this queen and her workers last year around late August and they have just recently started becoming more active. This queen has had some trouble laying eggs in the past but I'm still hopeful that she will get her colony up to a few dozen workers by the end of summer. Last week while doing some maintenance, my dad accidentally stumbled upon a colony of Tetramorium Immigran living in our address sign. I took the opportunity to snatch some of their brood before they scurried away with it all. In total, I got around 10 larvae with one alate larvae that I fed to my Temnothorax colony.
Temnothorax Longispinosus:
I also received this colony from Antennal_Scrobe last fall. When I received them they had about 50 workers, but when I took them out of hibernation they had an eight worker die-off leaving the colony at 42 workers. Their larvae didn't start developing until the start of summer. Now with summer finally here, almost half of the larvae have turned into pupae. I can't wait to see the explosion in worker count when they start to eclose! For whatever reason, they like to scatter their brood.
Here you can see the massive pile of pupae:
Crematogaster Cerasi:
These guys have always been one of my favorite species to keep. The queen laid a couple of eggs during hibernation, but most came after taking her out of diapause. A little less than three days ago she got her first workers. They have two more workers that are less than a day away from eclosing. When they get to five workers I will move them into an outworld. This is going to be one of my favorite colonies to keep.
Camponotus Pennsylvanicus Queens:
These three queens are my newest addition to my ant room with all of them being caught on May 28th, 2020. The largest pile of eggs is about eight with the smallest one being around four. My dad found the third queen on the siding of our house so I gave him the rights to permanently name her. If he ever ends up picking a name I will refer to that queen by that name.
Thank you for reading my first journal post! If you have any suggestions on things I could add that would be greatly appreciated!
Edited by Pumpkin_Loves_Ants, June 6 2020 - 11:16 AM.
