7 replies to this topic

[wallaby]

May 7, 2022

 

While out on a walk in my local neighbourhood I came across a foraging Myrmica queen. it may be a little late in the spring for them to be foraging but my area has been undergoing a cold snap since early march with temperatures averaging 9-10 degrees celsius. the local Myrmica in my area have just come out of hibernation 1-2 weeks ago, so I think that this queen only had the chance to lay eggs which hadn't developed into larvae, that being said, I do plan on brood boosting her later next weekend (too busy on weekdays). As with any queen, I am not sure if she will make it but I have a good feeling about this one.

 

When I put her into a test tube, I noticed that she was spending most of her time at dry end of it and she was pulling at the cotton for the 5 or so minutes that I had her out before I put here away. I did make the test tube setup in a way that I would with a fully claustral queen, so minimal space was available for her to walk around in. 

 

May 10, 2022

 

When I decided to give her some honey, it appeared like she had taken quite nicely to the small area in the test tube. Although I realized that I couldn't feed her without getting things messy due to the small space, so I transferred her to a tubs and tubes setup with some honey and some protein skinned about. she just kinda started running around and exploring before heading back to her test tube and resting. Not sure what to make of that. 

​Edit: she came out to drink the honey and is doing quite fine now

 

 

pics coming next week.

Edited by wallaby, May 10 2022 - 2:59 PM.

[wallaby]

May 16, 2022

 

the queen did take some time to get used to things, around a few days, to be precise. she was running around everywhere and only recently retreated to her test tube. no eggs yet, and it was raining all weekend so I couldn't go outside to brood boost her. as soon as everything dries up, I will be off. not much change happened though, and my camera broke (I have yet to fix it), so I couldn't take any macro pictures worth keeping. 

 

 

rip I do not know how to get an image url off my webcam, just gonna fix my camera instead

[wallaby]

May 18, 2022

 

this update did come a little early but I do have good news regarding the queen.

​when I caught her I didn't know if she was Myrmica specioides or rubra, because they look the same. I did find this queen 10 meters away from an m.rubra nest, and I decided to see if she was actually rubra. most queens caught here a specioides, but I had a gut feeling.i took a few workers from the rubra nest, and introduced then to the queen. when they first met, the workers began dragging the queen around and the queen was trying to fight back, but then, a few hours later, I noticed a worker and the queen doing trophallaxis. so it appears that they were able to tolerate each other and even bonded to each other. this is good news because it means that I can collect more workers and brood from the site and give it to the queen and her token force. 

 

​I went back a few hours later and collected quite a few workers (10-20) and then introduced them to the queen, everything went well and this should help the queen to found a stronger, larger, colony. epic.

[wallaby]

just went back over to look for obs n stuff when I stumbled upon an impressive colony of m.rubra with over 100 workers and 7 queens. I managed to snag 4 queens and take 40 workers with out getting stung, I think that this was a satellite nest because there were other m rubra colonies in the vicinity which were 10 times larger than this one. I plan on going back later to collect more. also I do not plan on introducing my current queen to this colony because I have this gut feeling that things are not gonna go very well.

Edited by wallaby, May 18 2022 - 4:38 PM.

[T.C.]

Do you have pictures? When it used to flood here they would float in big balls on top of the water. You could get several thousand worker strong colonies in a quick sweep with a container. I would poke very small holes in the bottom to drain the water. Then move them into one of my formicarium's. Somehow it was always a success.

[Antkeeper01]

Wallaby is awesome

[wallaby]

May 19, 2021

 

​the colony that I caught appears to ignore anything honey related and they also don't touch sugar water. I gave them a cricket and they gobbled it whole. I also moved them into a proper formicarium with an outworld to make things easier. probably gonna regret that later. 

 

​meanwhile the single queen that I found is not foraging anymore, with her small amount of workers doing the work. no eggs have appeared yet, but there could be some around but there is also sand in their test tube.

Do you have pictures? When it used to flood here they would float in big balls on top of the water. You could get several thousand worker strong colonies in a quick sweep with a container. I would poke very small holes in the bottom to drain the water. Then move them into one of my formicarium's. Somehow it was always a success.

that is a good idea, it seems much more efficient than collecting them manually, I should try that out. I also do plan on uploading photos soon, just getting my camera ready

[Idontexist]

Ok cool