I have come back with an update. Since almost a year ago the colony started dying out and not laying. I had messed up the nest water tower... So, the water tower wasn't providing adequate amount of water and unfortunately, they started dying quickly. Then, they didn't want to take food at all. So now I have decided to change the title of this journal to "NicholasP's Festive Camponotus festinatus".
I recently acquired the colony while I was in Payson, Arizona. As I was looking for ants there. I flipped a rock and found a colony of Camponotus festinatus. I saw the queen in the colony but decided against aspirating her into a vial since the colony seemed to be a mature size. So, I kept on flipping rocks finding Pheidole hyatti too, but the colony was also mature. So, after several more minutes of flipping rocks, I had found several colonies all too big though for me to want to aspirate. At last, I found a colony with the queen there.
They seemed to have 100 workers in total. So, I proceeded to aspirate the queen first. She was one chunky queen that almost didn't get through the aspirator, but in the end, I got her in. So, I now decided to aspirate as many majors as I could since they would be very important in the colony since they'd most likely be repletified or be used to kill any prey given to them. I aspirated around 10+ so now the last part was to aspirate the larvae and minors of the colony. At that point I started feeling or tasting a citrus like kind of smell or feeling. I stopped to think what the heck it was and then I realized... That was no citrus but instead formic acid... That I had been aspirating! I didn't know what to do and I wasn't able to notice at first when I was aspirating the formic acid with ants because I had lost my sense of smell almost completely just over a month ago due to the thing that's spreading among everyone right now, but that's not really important right now So, I decided that my only option was to carefully instead of aspirating I would need to breath outwards of the aspirator to push the acid out. I pushed slowly the air out of my lungs and after a couple of times doing that it was mostly normal so I started aspirating the ants again and I had to do it quick now because I knew I'd have to do that several more times and I knew it would be hard to do because I was already struggling coughing quite a bit... But I had to do it for the ants. I was not going to leave a single worker that I saw behind. after around 25 minutes later all the workers I was able to find were aspirated.
I went to my car to grab a plastic container I had to put them all into. Once they were in the container, I took a moment to actually admire and look at the beauty of these festinatus. The workers were a beautiful yellow. Kind of like Myrmecocystus navajo but as Camponotus. I noticed the colony was very well fed since the minors were gorged on liquids as their gasters were buldging with liquid.
Once I got home, I decided to start making a balsa wood ant nest for them since I had tons of Balsa wood lying around. I made a video of the process of making the nest which will be posted on my Youtube channel demonstrating how to make Miles Maxcer's balsa wood ant nest but instead with laser cut materials I showed how to make the nest with a Hacksaw and Coping saw. Fast forward to today and the nest is very close to complete. I have drilled magnet holes. The last steps are to cut the Plexi Glass, add the balsa wood sidings, glue in the magnets, and set it in the outworld so my Camponotus can move in. I will keep you all posted on how this goes!
Edited by NicholasP, January 30 2022 - 7:04 AM.
pudorosus are basically festinatus with slightly different colors but one massive difference. They're polygynous which explains why 2 days ago when I was hunting for ants in Payson I saw 2 festinatus looking queens in a colony! So, I guess time to change the title again! This time though to "NicholasP's Suspicious Camponotus pudoro(sus)". I will include pictures of them tonight.
