3 replies to this topic

[Zeiss]

24-6-2018

Well, well, well; who would have thought I would actually start journals again?  Anyways, here is a journal on the 18 Pogonomyrmex californicus queens I had caught on my school campus: UCR.  These were caught about 3 weeks ago to this date.  I originally started out with about 23, but am left with the now 18.  I am attempting to get them all out of test tubes as they do not last too long inside of those, or I may make some containers like Nurbs where they have a place to roam outside while having the tube inside the outworld as well.  These are all the containers I am using for them currently:

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Let's start off by showing the queens in tubes:

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I find it a bit ironic that the queen with her wings has the largest amount of brood out of them all:

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Here is what it looks like inside one of TarHeelAnts' original founding formicariums.  They have usually failed me, or that might have been my poor luck when I first got them years ago.  I had used them for some Myrmecocystus queens I got from Subverted (if any of you remember him) and they seemed to like them, just never nested inside of the petri dishes.  So far, I have had only one Pogonomyrmex californicus queen die in them.  The lids of the petri dishes have tiny holes where I insert the needle tip of a hyopdermic needle and push a little bit of water into.  The hydrostone layered with vermiculite picks it up quite well and distributes it.  The hydrostone inside the petri dish is completely separate from the outworld's.  There is a water tower outside where humidity is kept up outside, but queens tend to go to that to drink most of the time:

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This queen has the most brood out of all in these THA setups:

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Finally, here are the queens that I have put into these three dirtboxes.  They seem to love to dig around in different spots, never going too deep, then finding one spot to actually start their chamber.  Once they start to dig their permanent hole, they fill the other holes with their excavated dirt.  I thought that was some odd behavior, maybe making false chambers (although I highly doubt they have this sort of behavior, may just be coincidence).  These first 3 images are of one dirtbox where the queen has dug around all four sides:

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This is an old model of dspdrew's dirtshacks.  The queen dug down, but I have no sight of her, perhaps she has died:

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Here is the last dirtbox I have with a queen inside.  You can see her gaster and a leg:

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So far for food, I have given them a mixture of niger, quinoa, poppy, and grass seeds, as well as some other grains.  They tend to completely ignore the poppy seeds in my experience.  I have yet to give them a dead insect, but plan on giving them some dead or half-dead termite alates I caught in my dorm building a few weeks ago when they had their nuptial flights inside.  I doubt they had any pesticides in their system, or else they would not have flown anyways, so it should be safe to feed them to the queens.  

 

There ya go, my first journal entry in years.

Edited by Zeiss, March 22 2019 - 4:50 PM.

[Straywolf94]

Very nice! I want to start a few p. Californicus colonies too, but haven't been able to find any queens here in San Diego.

[nurbs]

Nice, I've got a few colonies going well. They are all in pencil case formicariums with seeds and some dirt. They all have larva now. All of them are in multi queen setups.

[Zeiss]

22-3-2019

These eventually all dug themselves to death, even though they were most likely fertile.  I can never get Pogonomyrmex californicus to stop digging or being restless, then they eventually exhaust themselves to death.