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[Flu1d]

So on December 29th (the first kinda warm day after a deep freeze) I caught 2 invicta queens. 2 days later on December 31st I went out again looking for queens. I had no luck, however I hijacked some brood from a nest to brood boost my 2 queens at home.

I do not know if this was a mistake or not, brood boosting before they laid any brood themselves.. We shall see.

It seems some of the brood did not fare well (a lot of dried up and discarded brood got put in a trash pile), however it does seem that colony 2 has had at least some success.. On January 4th I saw that colony 2 had workers. Colony 1 had none yet. A q-tip seems to be a pretty amazing cleaning tool for test tubes, thanks for the suggestion from a friend.

By January 5th (today) it seems as if colony 1 has one living worker kinda slightly moving (only in one spot though, like its waking up) and it seems like colony 2 had 3 workers moving around.

I gave both colonies a little bit of honey and 2 little frozen melanogaster fruit flies.

I will check on them before bed tomorrow to check the food but will be giving them a couple of days off after that.

I may end up journaling this experience. I am holding off to see if I can at least succesfully found one of the two colonies first.

I will be saving videos and photos for the journal, however I may post a pic or two later tomorrow if anyone is interested to see.

If anyone does want to see pics/video of the ants, give me a couple of suggestions of what you'd like to see.

Thanks!

[Flu1d]

I decided not to be lazy.. These are the two queens. I will, however, hold the rest of the pics/videos for the journal, and will still take some new pics if any get requested. I have not correlated colony 1 and colony 2 to which queen is which yet, I will probably do that in a day or two.. So, the top down, better color picture is the first of the 2 queens I caught and the darker size pic (sorry its so bad) was caught on the way home after giving up trying to find more.. So technically I will call them colony 1 and 2 based on that, I just need to look at them in person and then I will know which is which. Right now, colony 1 and 2 in the first post may not be the same as colony 1 and 2 based on what I will call them from these pics/when they were caught.

I will have this all worked out and have actual names for these colonies by time I journal, if I journal.

Edited by Flu1d, January 5 2023 - 9:01 PM.