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[Full_Frontal_Yeti]

Not a lot going on here to report. The Queen is back on egg laying again and the colony seems to be doing well. She never swells but keeps a steady pace up for months on end, then takes a 3-6 week break. Not sure on how long she pauses, but both times the brood pile will shrink down to maybe 4-6 late stage larvae/pupae before I notice more starting to show up again.

The trash pile during such times turns into mostly dead ants, kind’a gross, but for as big as the pile of dead gets you can’t really tell the colony has shrunk in numbers.

 

Here they had two clutches next to each other. One on the wall above, one on the mesh of the water tower below it.

 

up next to the top glass

 

on the mesh below

Edited by Full_Frontal_Yeti, March 12 2025 - 11:12 AM.

[OwlThatLikesAnts]

Has there been any more special ants like Meg the MutANT?

[AntsCali098]

I've always wanted to raise a big colony of Pogonomyrmex, but they always end up dying after nanitics for some reason unknown to me. I'll try again this year, as P.californicus is very easy to catch in my area. You seem to have a very long lasting colony. Do you have any tips for the genus? What seeds do you use to feed them?

[Full_Frontal_Yeti]

Has there been any more special ants like Meg the MutANT?

Nope. I did spot one ant with just one antenna a few months back. But by then the colony was so big i lost track of them quickly and have not spotted them again sense.
As they had one still, they were behaving as a normal ant and just blended into the crowd. So i can't say if they were born lacking one or if they lost it.

Meg was easy to spot even after the colony stared getting thicker. She was just a little bigger than typical and behaved oddly, sense she simply couldn't "hear" the other ants to follow their group behaviors. So even when there were a good number of ants, she stood out as easy to spot.

 

 

I've always wanted to raise a big colony of Pogonomyrmex, but they always end up dying after nanitics for some reason unknown to me. I'll try again this year, as P.californicus is very easy to catch in my area. You seem to have a very long lasting colony. Do you have any tips for the genus? What seeds do you use to feed them?

I got them as a 20+ founded colony from TarHeelAnts. From all my reading i'd estimate founding of this species fails 80-90% of the time even under the best conditions. Suggesting potentially weak genetics in some way if they fail so commonly even under optimal predator free conditions.


I'd point out that someone posting here has had good sucess doing simple dirt based founding setups and provided a thread of their findings.
However as far as i can figure TarHeelAnts does his as tube and tubes, and he's doing this at a commercial scale offering founded colonies practically year round.

I been feeding them a wide variety of seeds, a bulk of which is dandelion and kentucky blue grass which i bought from THA. I also pick up poppy, chia, flax and whatever else seems small enough for them from the bulk isle.
And some kind of insect feeder/fish flake/meat (about once a week or less depending on the size of the brood pile). I make sure to let them keep a bit of a larder of seeds as they would in the wild, but only give them more proteins once they are mostly done with the last bits i gave them.

I've always made sure to have some gradient of heat for them, even in a mini hearth i kept heat to one side.
While it is overkill for a lot of keepers, i've loved using a thermostat to automate nest temp control. And now that it is expanded to multiple nests I'm better able to mimic the conditions of getting a consistent year round temp deeper under ground.
With the "top" of the nest heated in parts to the mid/high 80s(f), and they keep the brood mostly in this nest. While the "lowest" part of the nest a constant 71f/72f. The Queen has taken up residence in a chamber there and rarely leaves.


And the only thing i've done that's fairly side of bell as far as i can tell, is give them a lot of outworld. Like a whole whole lot more outworld relative to the colony size, compare to what i see commonly. When they were just in the 20+ size in a minihearth, i also hooked up the otuworld from a fallenfortress, quadrupling their outworld space compared to the mninhearth alone. And i've always kept it this way with as much outworld space as i can manage for them. They take full advantage, even from day one they kept their trash pile as far from the nest entrance as they could go with it.
The main outworld being detached has also meant overall less nest disturbance, as all the feeding and cleaning done there never disturbs the nest enough to stress them out.
 

[Full_Frontal_Yeti]

OMG the queen is laying eggs like a machine right now. I so wish i could get a good pic of these egg piles but the macro is about 1/2mm too short a focus to the bottom of the nest.
I had generally estimated she drops 5-10 a day or so in a fairly steady pace.

 

In the two years I've had them i have never once seen a lone egg by itself. They are tiny, and when held as a single by a worker, can't be seen from overhead.
I only ever see them as part of clutches. I've seen some very small clutches of just 5-8 eggs, but never singles.

 

Until now, and now I've seen singles at least the last 3/4 of the look ins over the last 3 days(which is many, they sit right next to me).
And the egg pile/s are massive now compared to what i'm used to seeing with a spread of egg clutches to larva flowers.

Some of the look ins she has had one or two single eggs just stuck on her gaster at arbitrary spots. Like she was pumping em out so fast they just went where ever and some wound up stuck on her. Eventually a worker came and took them.

But the odds have changed too drastically on this, it's crazy. From two years of not seeing a lone egg, to now seeing one or two singles near her most of the time i go check in on em.
And this massive egg pile.

 

I bet alates are on the way. This is the 3rd "fresh start" egg pile I've seen, and it's way bigger than the first two which grew at a more steady rate.
So i'm a predict alates now on that sign.

[ANTdrew]

That’s a safe bet at this point.

[Full_Frontal_Yeti]

Still working on a new nest, but the brood is now everywhere. The queen continues to pump out eggs fast enough I see a single one from time to time, and anytime day or night it seems.
They keep brood now in all the water towers except the one right by the nest entrance. They almost never keep any brood in the chamber even tough it is a water tower and all the rest have plenty of brood on them.

 

Here’s the oldest nest, first one I made that worked. Need to dust it off badly.
This is the “bottom” of the nest where temps are  kept at 71/21f all the time. Except when the ambient gets hotter of course, no cooling. The queen used to live in this nest most of the time, but recently spent a while in the large first nest, and now has been in the middle nest for the last week.


 

The next two images are the middle nest also newest nest. It shares a little bit of heat cable with the “top” hottest nest, and has no temp probe in it. But with a surface IR temp reader I estimate average internal temps to be in the mid to high 70s.

There’s our Queen in her current chamber where she’s been for most of this week. She can be seen in the image of the first chamber too.

 

And here’s the “top” of the mound brood piles, using a temp probe/thermostat setup temps in here are in the mid to high 80s. I note that after the move they stopped using the dry hot chambers at the top of the nest. Which they used to keep late stage brood at. But now they keep them in this  watertower and only occasionally move some of the pupae over to the hottest chambers.

 

 

Whole setup. The new nest will push the middle nest back on the shelf filling the spot where it sits now. Connecting to it with those two ports we can see on the front face now. Images above are in proper order of nests/chambers going from left to right in the whole setup image here.