Introduction
Hello all, welcome to my first journal which has no roots or affiliations with my main journal, which will feature my Solenopsis molesta colony, who's presence has not been official announced by me to this forum, until now.
Update #0001
Saturday, August 8th, 2020
So a few weeks ago, Ants_Dakota and I were anting in a local park. We were flipping over rocks (to almost no avail, as they were by a stream and therefore were piled on top of each other and had no soil beneath them), when we came across a few rocks which actually did have soil underneath them, and therefore housed several colonies. Among them were Lasius americanus, Formica fusca group sp., Myrmica sp., and of course a colony of Solenopsis molesta. We attempted to excavate the Formica colony, however we couldn't find their main nest, just a nest entrance which ran into some ground which would make digging near impossible. So we were left with a mature Solenopsis molesta colony (whose nests are shallow), with thousands of workers (probably 10s of thousands). We only scratched the surface of their nest, and managed to get 3 fat queens, and over 1,000 workers, and several hundred brood. However, this was, as I mentioned, only a fraction of the colony. They likely had many more queens hidden down deeper, and tens of thousands of workers. Anyways, I took that fragment of a colony, and moved them into a test tube. Queens immediately began to produce, and their brood pile grew exponentially over the next couple weeks. They do eat a lot, typical of Solenopsis, and have been growing at a nice fast but steady pace. As of now they have literal mountains of brood in their nest, which probably numbers in the hundreds.
Here's the colony when they first moved into the test tube, and one of the queens. You can also see they have some alate brood as well.
Edited by AntsDakota, August 8 2020 - 9:54 AM.
, Ponera pennsylvanica, and Pheidole morrisi! 
