4 replies to this topic

[SuperFrank]

6/20/19: alate queens began appearing at a blacklight around 5:30am, climbing in number over the next hour and peaking right at sunrise. 10 or so queens were collected, some with males attached, some who had already removed their wings at the light. Many seemed to remove their wings the moment they landed. I am fairly interested in keeping this species and hope they are able to found, I have some in test tubes, some in small founding formicariums, and some I will be transferring to small dirt boxes to see which method works best. I have also sent two to another keeper, one of which was collected with a male attached.

[ANTdrew]

Awesome! Crematogaster are the best! With the caveat that they can escape anything given enough time.

[SuperFrank]

Haha we have C pinicola here, they grow like invicta!

[SuperFrank]

Update 6/23/19: a few of the queens have eggs now, I was very surprised at the size of the egg in relation to the queen as they are very large.

[ANTdrew]

Excellent! That’s really nice that you don’t have to hibernate them before they lay like the northern species.