I've had this small colony for almost a year now, and though I've never been able to get them to grow beyond a couple of workers, I enjoyed their unique size and coloration. After they almost died out from lack of brood, I hibernated them over the winter and since then they have been making some brood progress, hatching a third worker larger than the others only last week with four more pupae and maybe ten brood all together. Nothing compared to my other colonies, but for all the trouble I have gone through trying to keep them alive at all, it was enough to give me hope that I could get them to a decent size by their next hibernation. However, last night I was doing a rearrangement of my room and chose to move their pencil box formicarium from my closet to a shelf where I could view them better. Unfortunately, I didn't take into account the fact that recently Argentine ants had been recently making a much larger presence on those shelves, even going so far as to swarm a bag of crickets I had lying around, and my honey bottle. I know it was stupid that I didn't consider the threat, but I have never had a colony be attacked by them before, even keeping my Liometopum occidentale in a Fortress on that same shelf with no issue. Anyways, this morning I happened to look over at their nest and see the queen lying outside on her back, twitching. As soon as I looked closer I saw that the entire setup was swarming with Argentines, and the entire brood and colony besides the queen was gone. I quickly retrieved her, but by that point she was clearly on the brink of death, with her entire brood eaten and her workers in pieces. At this point, there is nothing I can do for them, so I collected what I could of them and threw away the entire setup. Here is a picture of the remains of the colony including their hardly-living queen. I want to warn anyone who lives in an area where Linepithema humile or a similar small, aggressive pest ant is common to be careful with where they put colonies in setups that are easy to escape from, especially pencil case outworlds.
