Introduction (Warning: All my pictures are terrible : D)
Greetings people, I am here to present you the rarely kept Golden Camponotus (Camponotus sericeiventris).
I don't think there are many videos/journals of people keeping them so I thought I would just do this journal.
Well, let's talk a little bit about this colony and species, first of all they're super duper cool because of their golden coloration, it isn't really that they're actually golden but they have hairs which make it so that when you shine light over them they look golden, this means that in a low light setting they still look golden but can also look pretty silver (The queen's gaster is always pretty golden no matter what).
Anywaysss, so these ants were probably the best test tube colony I've ever had until I moved them to their mini heart, this is because they would never freak out or go out of the tube whenever I take the cotton out. Apart from that they are fairly aggressive against insects (even applying formic acid to dead stuff) but pretty tame and curious with me.
The big downside of this species is they grow SLOWLY, this is a fact at least for young colonies, maybe they speed up a ton later on but for now they're growing at a snail's pace since even when heating them their egg to worker cycle is of about 2 months or maybe even a little bit more... which is understandable since (don't take this as a completely accurate measure) I measured their workers to be 8-10mm with the queen being 18mm.
They're basically the perfect Camponotus if you don't take into account their slow growth and the fact that they chug down hummingbird nectar like a 16 year old hormone filled dehydrated teen.
So anyways, the colony is 5 workers strong by the time I post this (11/28/2020) and they have a pretty decent brood pile which you can see in the pictures.
in the picture below you can see they get their gaster in between their legs like polyrhachis when they're startled (this is when I was moving them)
Edited by EchoMeter4, March 31 2021 - 10:53 AM.
