147 replies to this topic

[antsriondel]

Sadly this diapause season was a disaster. The fridge the ants were in started to fluctuate in temperature and it killed six maybe seven of my ant colonies and two of my founding queens . Including:

My Crematogaster colony

Both Prenolepis colonies 

Myrmica queens

Crematogaster queen

Formica neogagates colony

Solenopsis molesta colony

Camponotus pennsylvanicus  large colony (maybe).

 

It reduced the Tetramorium to around fifty workers, lowered the Formica incerta colony to around sixty workers, killed all but one of the Camponotus novaeboracensis workers. The second smaller pennsylvanicus colony had all but two workers and the queen died.

No way man! That sucks! I hope that you can catch more, and continue to grow this amazing journal. 

Edited by antsriondel, January 22 2023 - 1:29 PM.

[ANTdrew]

This is terrible. So sorry for your losses! 🙏🏻

[ColAnt735]

Update 3/3/23

 

To be completely honest it's been a bumpy ride since the last update in the journal. The Formica died out due to mould and every time I tried to save them it would just pop up again. The large Camponotus pennsylvanicus colony's queen also died. She hadn't been acting the same and seemed to go through phases where she was limp and then all of a sudden she would become semi-active again, until one day when she suddenly died.

 

On the other hand the other colonies have been recovering nicely so I'll get to that now:

 

Tetramorium immigrans-

Holy crap this colony is recovering. On the third day of being out of diapause the queen laid a ton of eggs. Now those eggs have pupated and are starting to enclose, and as an extra cherry on top the queen laid eggs throughout that whole process. Thanks to the queen's determination to get her colony back on track this colony is probably hovering around seventy workers. They accept everything I give them and show no signs of slowing down. Hopefully this colony returns to its former glory.

 

Camponotus novaeboracensis-

Another colony that is absolutely thriving they've doubled their worker count to a grand total of two! But what's better than that you may ask? The four pupae ten Larvae and at least twenty eggs! As you can tell the queen has been very busy and her workers are too. They eat more than they used to and are growing quicker than ever before.

 

Camponotus pennsylvanicus- 

Although this colony is definitely doing the worst out of the three they still are showing signs of recovery. For example they eat more and the queen has started to lay eggs again. 

 

Lasius neoniger and brevicornis- Nothing to update but they all have eggs!

[antsriondel]

Nice! 

[ColAnt735]

Update 29/4/23

 

This year has been pretty bad ant keeping wise for me.  Shortly after the last update the Tetramorium immigrans queen just straight up died. No signs of being unhealthy just died.

 

Tapinoma sessile-

A new addition! I collected this ant colony when my classmates uncovered them in my classroom. I quickly swooped in and got as many queens and workers as I could before the custodian came in to exterminate them. Now if you haven't experienced something similar to this then let me try to explain it. The amount of looks I got from this was insane... The downside of having a rarer hobby. From this excursion I got three queens and between 20-30 workers. After many failed attempts at putting this colony in a nest I decided on keeping them in a test tube setup for as long as possible. At the time of writing this the queens have laid a hefty batch of eggs and some of them have even hatched into larvae. If any of you Tapinoma keepers wish to give me advice on this species feel free to.

 

Camponotus novaeboracensis-

This queen just keeps pumping out eggs. She has amassed a worker count of thirty-eight workers and a mountain of brood. This colony has been extremely voracious and keeps showing me they can eat way more than I feed them. I'll definitely move this colony into a larger nest soon.

 

Camponotus pennsylvanicus- This colony hasn't really recovered but is starting to show signs of recovery. They have seven workers now and a little bit of brood.

 

Messor minor minor-  Since I don't have many colonies anymore I've decided to lump this colony in with the rest of the journal. This colony had a really bumpy start. They lost all but one worker gained three workers and lost two of them.But thanks to the queen powering through it all they have five workers with quite a bit of brood

 

Lasius brevicornis and neoniger- They literally only have freshly hatched larvae, I despise founding stage Lasius.

 

Pictures coming soon.

Edited by ColAnt735, April 29 2023 - 8:22 PM.

[Ernteameise]

Good on you rescuing these ants at school. I can imagine the looks- I had these at school and now I get them at work. I try to ignore it, but am ready to educate whenever asked.
As for the other colonies, I hope all goes well and they thrive.

[bmb1bee]

I can't imagine how unsettling that would've been to collect ants like that in front of people... I usually have my dad or a friend around me when I'm collecting because I get really nervous anting like that. Kudos to you for surviving the ordeal! Anyway, just one thing about Tapinoma: they're easy, but are extremely stubborn and refuse to move. Just saying from my experience lol. I'm looking forward to the novaeboracensis pics!

Edited by bmb1bee, May 1 2023 - 9:41 AM.

[AntsCali098]

I would never have the courage to do that lol. I'm glad you saved the Tapinoma.

Edited by AntsCali098, May 1 2023 - 10:47 AM.