First Entry: Aug. 25 2020
I found this queen a couple months ago with my good friend Spazmops. (go check out his Pogonomyrmex journal here! https://www.formicul...ntalis-journal/ ) I was out looking for ants, and found one stray alate pogonomyrmex. I called up Spazmops right away, and he came over to meet me. Not long after that, we found a couple more alates. Frantically trying to find the source, we stumbled upon a large pogonomyrmex mound with hundreds of alates pouring out of the main entry/exit point. We got lucky with the timing, it was no less than perfect. Within ten minutes, the ants started taking flight one by one. They weren't the most ...errr... coordinated fliers, I saw multiple ramming into trees and spiraling out of control, but hey I doubt I'd be very coordinated if I tried to fly for the first time either. Soon after, it was raining hundreds of thousands of mating pogonomyrmex. I must have got hit by at least fifty. In the midst of all the chaos, I hadn't brought the most ideal ant catching supplies, but I made do with it and brought home around five.
In the next week or so, we'd go out to a different spot, (an abandoned trail) and hunt for founding chambers. We found and dug up lots of queens, (around thirty) in the course of about a week. We also had some close calls with among other things a massive hornet nest in a log we had looked at in hopes of finding ant colonies. Amazingly, we made it home unscathed, and I immediately set out to get together some formicaria. I wasn't expecting to bring home that many ants so I had to buy more materials, but within a few days, I had them all set up. Some in tub and tubes setup, and some in just test tubes. We ended up selling most, and because of a couple deaths due to parasites, I only have one now. I currently have her in a Type III Mini Hearth by THA. I'm overall very satisfied with it. I put her in the fridge for 45 minutes and then after taking her out, hastily took out all the substrate from the test tube. I carefully dumped her in the mini hearth and did my best to get the eggs in with a wet q-tip. (My best isn't very good unfortunately)
Overall, she is off to a shaky start. For the first couple days, she ran around in the outworld like crazy and enjoyed snacking on all, yes, ALL, of her brood. Honestly not too surprising although a little disappointing. Then she finally settled down in the nest and started laying eggs again. She can't seem to get comfortable though... She has moved her brood pile from the nestmate, to a corner, to another corner, and it is now on top of the water tower. I hope she continues to progress. I will let you know when anything else significant happens or when someone requests an update. I am planning on getting her some sort of heating source, I think she will do a lot better with that.
If you made it this far, I truly thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed it and I will continue to post updates. Please give me any feedback you have about the layout I chose for this journal, and if you have any tips.
Good luck anters!
Be kinder than necessary,
Devi
The mound I from which all the queens were found. You can see all of the reproductives swarming the top
Edited by Devi, January 19 2021 - 7:53 AM.
