199 replies to this topic

[Full_Frontal_Yeti]

Glad to report the colony is ticking over same as always.

The slight down time in brood that needed to be fed, resulted in a slow to grow trash pile with little to no seed husks to discard. And while nothing seemingly bad is going on, there’s so many ants now, that a new trash piled of just dead ants formed anyway.  And got noticable.

It is starting to be buried under seed husks now, but it was kind a gross for a week of watching the dead ants just pile up.
But now there’s brood everywhere, with all the little baskets laid out on all the water tower space there is. Still just larvae though, no pupae yet being kept in the hot spots. I see one or two that’ll be official pupae in the next day or two.

 

Here’s the long foil bit they got form the small to med outworld. It’s taken them a full week or so to get lined up with the port to go to the trash pile in the large outworld. This will likely be there later today.

 

And here’s a “Smooth fish” feeding going on.

 

They really swarm the stuff, and it’ll all be ate in just a couple to few days, leaving no refuse behind to rot.

 

I love the no mess foods, but they still get some cricket or waxworms from time to time too. I figure some amount of natural variety is generally best for them so I don’t go all in on one food source.

 

And here's some ant keeper feed i recommend:

 

 

[ANTdrew]

Now that’s some nice nectar!

[NotAxo]

Seems like the you've got a special ‘ant-idote’ for a long day 

[Full_Frontal_Yeti]

And the colony carries on. They seem to be doing very well, and get a lot more active as the temps rise around here. Once ambient is at 85f or more they are very active and busy in the outworld. And they move a lot faster in general with higher temps.

 

The colony seems to  have hit a death/birth equilibrium. There are dead ants daily. The trash pile will be just dead ants for a bit after I vacuum it out. But for all the dead ants, the colony size never shrinks, it just very slowly grows now. I estimate a 1.1-1.3/1   birth/death ratio. So the colony grows, but with the total size large enough now, the visible growth to notice is very slow.
As well it took a while for the ants to age and start dying, so opening growth seemed very fast without the old age death rate cutting into it early on.

I’ve heard from Mack and hope to get my new outworld sometime before Christmas, but I’m not holding my breath. I was surprised he was even able to be operating already/still, and with more  hurricane on the way I’m just going to have to be patient. Hope he and the  box maker business he works with are safe and dry. And cross my fingers to also hope I get what I want sooner than later.

 

Still managed to not be stung yet, which I’m personally surprised by for how many times I wind up with them crawling on me while I’m working in their space. They are generally fast to bite/sting anything, like it’s just how they say “what’s this?” to anything new around them. But my luck is holding.

 

Here's a few snaps. Anytime i do a full fresh up on their stuff they go swarm on everything.
they had water and nectar just 10 min ago, but they act all starved out like they hadn’t had any of this in days when a full fresh’n up happens.

 

 

 

 

Here we can see that they get attracted to sunlight. During certain times of day when a strip of sun shines direct onto the outworld, the ants will congregate in it.

And yeah that outworld is looking a bit nasty, I got a new one in the pipe already, but all I can do is wait now.

 

 

Last we see an unwelcomed visitor moved into the med outworld. I didn’t spot the spider until I took the lid off to do water dispensers. They were clearly eyeing the ants as a possible meal but likely also dangerous. They were slow and amenable to getting in the bug cup for eviction. I wondered if they had already been stung a bit maybe.

Edited by Full_Frontal_Yeti, October 10 2024 - 12:38 PM.

[Full_Frontal_Yeti]

I believe the colony(Queen) has an on/off cycle of a few months. The brood pile grows for a while, stabilizes, and then slowly shrinks. Then begins to grow again to repeat this cycle. She clearly takes some time off from laying eggs every so often. But the colony as a whole never seems to slow down. And only grow in terms of adult ants running around. For as many dead ants as the trash pile grows by, the colony never seems to be shrinking just growing.

 

I found an interesting behavior related to sugar water. I put out open feeding dishes of Sunburst from time to time along side the usual liquid feeders. And as the sugar water dries out it gets sticky/solid. So I just squirt a little water into the dish. This lasts for a few days, adding a squirt each day. But during this time the ants will start to put dirt into the tray. Packing it in, then digging it all out and taking it back to the nest. Like some kind of longer term storage of the sugar/way to get it back to ants that don’t leave the nest?

This is a recently dug out sugar water dish.


Here they are in the first staging area where they bring the sugar mud slurry.


They pack it into little lumps and stash these in the nest.
They never seem to keep a big larder of this stuff in nest, but go through it fairly quickly with the chambers it was stored in being empty again within 2-5 days or so depending on the amount.
 

 

I been using nestmates as outworld water dispensers for a while now they work great.

 

But they do go through water kind of fast these days. And I wanted something that would not only  hold more water but  not need to be in a specific bubbles need to go up orientation. As well I just can’t bring myself to pay so much for the little 3d printed plastic bits used on tiny glass jars. It’s like $16 just for two, I spent a little less than that total and got a box of 30 lidded glass jars and the blue sponge corks for them.
So now I’m using these as water dispensers.

 

 

The only oddity to them is they normally suck the cork inside past the bottle neck over time, but it’s not really a problem. I can just pull the stopper back out a little if needed, but typically it's not an issue. I’d recommend them for any larger colony that drinks a lot of water
If you already got them around, plain old test tubes work great like this too, but might be kind of large for some outworlds.

Lastly got word from THA that the outworld progress is happening. So I’m making another nest expansion now, and will have the big rearrange here in the next couple weeks to be ready for it.

Edited by Full_Frontal_Yeti, November 8 2024 - 9:38 AM.

[jabasson]

Something else you can try as well is to just add paper towel and put the lid on around it. UtahAnts showed me this and it works great for my sugar feeders for my Myrmecocystus. https://www.formicul...-liquid-feeder/

[Full_Frontal_Yeti]

Watching the brood pile slowly shrink right now and waiting for the next new egg clutch/larvae bloom to be seen. I imagine maybe another week or so. Last time the brood pile got down to the last group of workers to eclose before i spotted the signs she was laying again.
 

Thanks for the reminder about that paper towel method for water dispensers. They work great and as long as I keep the paper trim small, the water lasts longer(lower evaporation rate) than with the blue stoppers. And yeah i got that fancy Dutch angle shot for those.

 

 

 

 

 

Still playing with the foil, it keeps them busy.

 

 

 

As I had mentioned the trash pile gets a heavier dead ants ratio to it at times. With the brood pile shrinking they produce less husk trash, so the dead ants become more obvious. Though for all that die the colony whole seems to mostly be growing.

Got the next nest expansion made, this took one toss out to get to.

 

 

It has four ports, one on each short side and two on one long side.  And i'll clean up the edges with my dremmel later. Though it sits so flat already, i'm not going to mess with the bottom edges and leave them as is.
In this close up you can see the three dark areas where the ports come up into the connecting tunnel space from lower down on the nest block.


Yeah heart shapes, cause hearts are cool.

 

I was a bit too distracted on the first pour and build so it didn’t turn out useful. I kind of just wanted to copy my first one as that nest is the popular place for all the hip ants to hang out. It is just two slightly large chambers with water towers and a bit of connecting tunnel. I’ll stop by the frame shop latter today to get a museum glass top cut for it. It’s not a perfectly squared shape so the glass will wind up hanging off a little on a couple edges. My work is not just good, it’s good enough.
 

I’m going to make some paper cut outs of all the nests with the connection ports drawn on so I can work out how I’ll arrange it all first. Before I tear up their world and stress them all out for a few hours when this rearrange actually happens.

Edited by Full_Frontal_Yeti, November 15 2024 - 9:59 AM.

[ANTdrew]

That looks cool.

[Full_Frontal_Yeti]

Just a quick image to show. Overnight they come out and pack into the first outworld, sometimes the 2nd one too. When the lights come on in the morning they migrate back into the nest proper.
This is right when the light came on and they were dense on the fake aloe there. This was the only not blurry shot i got, but the whole outworld is dense with them. Takes them about 3-5 min to clear out, they got a morning commute like me.




The brood are down to looking like the last cycle of larvea are growing, on eggs to be spotted yet. If the rest cycle is the same as last, she'll lay more eggs some time in the next couple weeks when the current feeding larvae are pupating. Good to notice this so i stop feeing them for a while when there are fewer to feed, and let them use up some of their larder.

As soon as I hear from Mack on nearing shipping, i'll do the big reardange to make the room for the new big big outworld. I'll keep the current big one in use, and alwayas keep two outworlds going. I find it invaluable to have a place to move the ants when i want to clean an outworld.

[Full_Frontal_Yeti]

The rearrange has happened, though the new outworld is not yet here.

I went from this

to this

with the empty space where the lights are piled where the new outworld will go. I won’t be mounting the lighting till it’s here as I’m not sure how high any of the decorations are going to go. The image is a tripod with normal room lighting, sans the large outworld lighting not yet in use. The nests are not covered but decently shaded and they don't seem to mind as they acclimate to lit conditions fairly well. You can see in the original setup all the nests were right there by the overhead lights, just not directly under any.

The two smaller outworlds are now out of use. They were getting fairly nasty after 2 years of collecting ant poop. I’m going to cut them up to retrieve the petrified wood stones from them for decoration in the new outworld.
The large outworld is soon to be the small outworld whenever the new outworld arrives. The little foil plugged tube will be replaced with a run to the new outworld which will fill the entire space on the raised platform.

I made paper cut outs of the nests with ports marked for working out how things would be laid out before I tore it all apart. But those 2d drawings didn’t take int account port height. And nests had to be spaced out more than I had intended to allow for up/down bend in the connecting tubes.
I also wound up having to toss out the first nest (THA fallen fortress) as it has a small hole above one of the tube ports. It had been covered by the nest magnets pulling it against the outworld when it was attached. but as I was letting that outworld go I had to also let the nest go. But I feel I still got plenty of nest for a while so no biggie.

 

The large nest is heated mainly on the side away from the water towers (copper tube runs through it on the long side) with the temp probe close to that side between the heat source and water towers. It is set for 80-82f, and temps on the IR reader say between 84-89f depending on how close to the heat cable you are. The cable is then laid on the glass to prevent condensation more than add heat.
It takes a couple days of putting the cable on, checking for condensation, rearranging the cable, checking later for condensation spots, rearranging the cable again. Rinse repeat until you don’t get any more condensation spots. The cable has a mind of it’s own so you can’t generally just move one little part of it, but have to rearrange the whole thig to get the bends and twists to go in the places you need.
I use bluetak/locktite putty to secure the nests and outworld to the shelf(earthquake country), as well as hold the heat cable in place. I recommend the stuff works great and I find it easier to keep visually out of the way compared to painters’ tape. Which I use a little for attaching to the sides of nests.

 

 

This is the newest nest I made recently, another two heart water tower setup but larger than the last one. I would have wanted it with the unused ports facing where more nest could be added. But what wound up being my preference for the big nest first, this was the only reasonable orientation to use. The heat cable is just draped on the glass to prevent condensation, it's not really being heated too much, but sits in between the two nests that are being heated.

 

 

The first custom nest I made still in use. This has become the Queen’s main chamber where she is found mostly all the time. This nest is also thermostat controlled, wiht the on/off temps set to 70f/72f, keeping it a consistent and cooler temp as if it were several feet below the surface. She moves back and forth between the two chambers a little but stays mainly in the bottom one. We can’t make her out in the image, she’s in the middle of that cluster of them on the left. Still no new egg clutches that I have noticed and they’re down to the last few of the brood pile. I'm sure she'll fire up production again whenever she feels like it, as nest conditions here are mostly consistent year round.

Edited by Full_Frontal_Yeti, January 26 2025 - 1:12 PM.

[Ernteameise]

Wow, this is shaping up nicely!

It is interesting that even with near constant conditions, ant queens still enter into rest periods. But I think this is necessary, since they use so much energy pumping out eggs.

[Ants_Dakota]

 

The first custom nest I made still in use. This has become the Queen’s main chamber where she is found mostly all the time. This nest is also thermostat controlled, wiht the on/off temps set to 70f/72f, keeping it a consistent and cooler temp as if it were several feet below the surface. She moves back and forth between the two chambers a little but stays mainly in the bottom one. We can’t make her out in the image, she’s in the middle of that cluster of them on the left. Still no new egg clutches that I have noticed and they’re down to the last few of the brood pile. I'm sure she'll fire up production again whenever she feels like it, as nest conditions here are mostly consistent year round.

I have some nests similar to the one you made with the hydrometer probe to test the temperature, but how did you get it to maintain a steady temp? Do you have a separate heating pad or cable just for that chamber or does that probe control the entire nest?

[Full_Frontal_Yeti]

 

 

The first custom nest I made still in use. This has become the Queen’s main chamber where she is found mostly all the time. This nest is also thermostat controlled, wiht the on/off temps set to 70f/72f, keeping it a consistent and cooler temp as if it were several feet below the surface. She moves back and forth between the two chambers a little but stays mainly in the bottom one. We can’t make her out in the image, she’s in the middle of that cluster of them on the left. Still no new egg clutches that I have noticed and they’re down to the last few of the brood pile. I'm sure she'll fire up production again whenever she feels like it, as nest conditions here are mostly consistent year round.

I have some nests similar to the one you made with the hydrometer probe to test the temperature, but how did you get it to maintain a steady temp? Do you have a separate heating pad or cable just for that chamber or does that probe control the entire nest?

 

I use this product

https://www.digiten....om-fermentation

 

 

It's a programmable thermostat control with two separate temp probes and an attached outlet each. The third outlet is a timer only one for lighting. I just glance at the temps once a day to be sure things are as expected.

Very useful for a larger colony to have more than one temp probe control. I keep the first nest in the mid-high 80s(f), as if it were the top of the mound getting the suns heat all day.
While the last nest in the line is kept a consistent 70-72(f), as if i were several feet underground.
I've been using this from day one and really love it. It makes winter/summer easy as i do nothing, the thermostat does all the work for me.


I like to heat from the sides and in concentrated spots away from the water towers. If the heat is too close to the water towers water will evaporate fast enough to supersaturate the air to 100% and start putting condensation on everything.
So my main heat application is on a side away from the water, the cable is then draped on the glass only as much as it has to be to prevent condensation from forming(keep the glass from getting too cold).

On the last nest, the cable runs over the nest don't even contact the glass directly except at the edges. It's just like 1/8" inch or less above the glass in most places, keeping the glass just warm enough to not allow condensation. On the large nest in several places the cable is lifting off the glass but is close enough to be doing it's job of stopping condensation.

Edited by Full_Frontal_Yeti, January 27 2025 - 9:03 AM.

[Full_Frontal_Yeti]

I got a weird one  here.

Last night i spotted a not ant larvae/pupa in the nest.
It was a little bigger over all, had some kind of tail/sting looking bit on the backend.

I was not able to get any images of this to show. The thing had the look of going from a larvae into a pupa of some kind. The shape and size making it clear it is no ant.

 

A group of the ants were very excited by it, it was being kept in the main brood chamber (of which there are very few now as the queen was on egg laying break) and they were at least 5 or 6 ants all over it.
But i could not say from what i saw if they were caring for it very enthusiastically, or if they were trying to tear it up into food.

It had some kind of stinger like bit growing out of the backend that ants were very into pulling on or licking maybe? It was easy to spot as it had a very active group of ants on it and it was a little bigger(10% maybe) than a typical ant larvae.

I watched this for a while though I could not determine what exactly was going on. But they were caring for it as if it were one of their own was my best guess.

When i went to look this morning i could not find it, though it was early so maybe i just wasn't alert enough yet to spot it.
I'll  check again this afternoon.

As far as I could tell it was a lone oddity in the nest and everything seemed normal otherwise.

And on the plus note, when i was watching this oddity closely last night, i spotted a tiny larvae clutch indicating the queen is laying eggs again.

As best as i can tell she tends to lay maybe 2-5 eggs a day typically. So it takes a while before there's enough going on to be able to spot it. And the new egg rate is only a tiny bit faster than the eclose rate. So the brood pile tends to grow fairly slowly and never gets too massive before she takes her next break. With the brood pile shrinking down to the last cohort of eclosers around when she starts laying again. At least for the last two years i've had them this has been the cycle so far.


So if anyone has any ideas about what sort of critter might'a found it's way into the colony let me know.
As before it seems to be a single critter, with at least a couple weeks to go on transformation still into whatever it is.

For whatever reason I've imagined some kind of coocoo style bug whose young will just leave the nest whenever ready.
Rather than something that's going to stay in the nest and parasitize the ants/brood directly.

No clue where this came from, first time i seen it was last night(and i look at the ants a lot every day), but it is clearly not fresh to the nest for as big as it was and starting to develop a new body shape from its pupae phase.
I do rock an open top outworld so there is some potential for outside contaminants to be introduced.

Odds are i won't be able to get a good image due to nest depth and the narrow focal range of the clip on macro i got but i'll keep trying.

Thanks for any input on this,

Yeti

[Full_Frontal_Yeti]

 

 

The first custom nest I made still in use. This has become the Queen’s main chamber where she is found mostly all the time. This nest is also thermostat controlled, wiht the on/off temps set to 70f/72f, keeping it a consistent and cooler temp as if it were several feet below the surface. She moves back and forth between the two chambers a little but stays mainly in the bottom one. We can’t make her out in the image, she’s in the middle of that cluster of them on the left. Still no new egg clutches that I have noticed and they’re down to the last few of the brood pile. I'm sure she'll fire up production again whenever she feels like it, as nest conditions here are mostly consistent year round.

I have some nests similar to the one you made with the hydrometer probe to test the temperature, but how did you get it to maintain a steady temp? Do you have a separate heating pad or cable just for that chamber or does that probe control the entire nest?

 

realized i didn't fully answer the question correctly about the control of the nest.

This image has the parts marked. The long red line is the copper tube i embedded into the nest (less visible heat cable, no tape needed, more efficient heat transfer). It is the primary heating for the nest going in one side and out the other.
The short red line is the temp probe locaiton. You can see how i placed it fairly close to the heat source, but not right on it. And in between that heat source and the water towers.


It takes a bit to dial this in just right, as the temp probe locaiton is cooler than temps right over the heat cable, and hotter than the temps by the water towers.
I adjust the temp range up/down a bit until

 

A: the external IR temp probe i have reads about 84-86 or so on external nest walls near the copper pipe
+
B: the ants use the area over the copper pipe and tend to move brood there regularly. If they leave the area and don't move brood there like it was the top of the nest at the hot part of the day, then it's too hot and i need to lower the temp range on the thermostat.

On my thermostat when i read temps between 79-82f(at the probe), then over the heatpipe internal temps i estimate to be about 85-89f(target range).

When it is all ticking over right, they move the late stage larvae and pupae to the hot areas for several hours, then back to the more humid water towers for a few hours, then back to the hot spots again. They just go round and round doing that endlessly 24/7.

So yes one temp probe manages the whole nest, and the two probe device lets me manage multiple nests to different temp ranges. Going from hot at the "top" of the nest to a consistent cool 70-72 "several feet underground".
The middle nest has no control, it just shares a little bit of the large nest cable(mostly prevents condensation), and sits in between the two actively heat nests.

 

[Ants_Dakota]

 

 

 

The first custom nest I made still in use. This has become the Queen’s main chamber where she is found mostly all the time. This nest is also thermostat controlled, wiht the on/off temps set to 70f/72f, keeping it a consistent and cooler temp as if it were several feet below the surface. She moves back and forth between the two chambers a little but stays mainly in the bottom one. We can’t make her out in the image, she’s in the middle of that cluster of them on the left. Still no new egg clutches that I have noticed and they’re down to the last few of the brood pile. I'm sure she'll fire up production again whenever she feels like it, as nest conditions here are mostly consistent year round.

I have some nests similar to the one you made with the hydrometer probe to test the temperature, but how did you get it to maintain a steady temp? Do you have a separate heating pad or cable just for that chamber or does that probe control the entire nest?

 

realized i didn't fully answer the question correctly about the control of the nest.

This image has the parts marked. The long red line is the copper tube i embedded into the nest (less visible heat cable, no tape needed, more efficient heat transfer). It is the primary heating for the nest going in one side and out the other.
The short red line is the temp probe locaiton. You can see how i placed it fairly close to the heat source, but not right on it. And in between that heat source and the water towers.
heatmap.jpg

It takes a bit to dial this in just right, as the temp probe locaiton is cooler than temps right over the heat cable, and hotter than the temps by the water towers.
I adjust the temp range up/down a bit until

 

A: the external IR temp probe i have reads about 84-86 or so on external nest walls near the copper pipe
+
B: the ants use the area over the copper pipe and tend to move brood there regularly. If they leave the area and don't move brood there like it was the top of the nest at the hot part of the day, then it's too hot and i need to lower the temp range on the thermostat.

On my thermostat when i read temps between 79-82f(at the probe), then over the heatpipe internal temps i estimate to be about 85-89f(target range).

When it is all ticking over right, they move the late stage larvae and pupae to the hot areas for several hours, then back to the more humid water towers for a few hours, then back to the hot spots again. They just go round and round doing that endlessly 24/7.

So yes one temp probe manages the whole nest, and the two probe device lets me manage multiple nests to different temp ranges. Going from hot at the "top" of the nest to a consistent cool 70-72 "several feet underground".
The middle nest has no control, it just shares a little bit of the large nest cable(mostly prevents condensation), and sits in between the two actively heat nests.

 

 

Excellent explanation, and I find the copper pipe quite innovative. That is quite easy to mold into a nest and, as you mentioned, the heat transfer is high. Honestly that should be an option for any nest built for Pogonomyrmex as it makes life really easy. 

[Ernteameise]

I got a weird one  here.

Last night i spotted a not ant larvae/pupa in the nest.
It was a little bigger over all, had some kind of tail/sting looking bit on the backend.

I was not able to get any images of this to show. The thing had the look of going from a larvae into a pupa of some kind. The shape and size making it clear it is no ant.

 

A group of the ants were very excited by it, it was being kept in the main brood chamber (of which there are very few now as the queen was on egg laying break) and they were at least 5 or 6 ants all over it.
But i could not say from what i saw if they were caring for it very enthusiastically, or if they were trying to tear it up into food.

It had some kind of stinger like bit growing out of the backend that ants were very into pulling on or licking maybe? It was easy to spot as it had a very active group of ants on it and it was a little bigger(10% maybe) than a typical ant larvae.

I watched this for a while though I could not determine what exactly was going on. But they were caring for it as if it were one of their own was my best guess.

When i went to look this morning i could not find it, though it was early so maybe i just wasn't alert enough yet to spot it.
I'll  check again this afternoon.

As far as I could tell it was a lone oddity in the nest and everything seemed normal otherwise.

And on the plus note, when i was watching this oddity closely last night, i spotted a tiny larvae clutch indicating the queen is laying eggs again.

As best as i can tell she tends to lay maybe 2-5 eggs a day typically. So it takes a while before there's enough going on to be able to spot it. And the new egg rate is only a tiny bit faster than the eclose rate. So the brood pile tends to grow fairly slowly and never gets too massive before she takes her next break. With the brood pile shrinking down to the last cohort of eclosers around when she starts laying again. At least for the last two years i've had them this has been the cycle so far.


So if anyone has any ideas about what sort of critter might'a found it's way into the colony let me know.
As before it seems to be a single critter, with at least a couple weeks to go on transformation still into whatever it is.

For whatever reason I've imagined some kind of coocoo style bug whose young will just leave the nest whenever ready.
Rather than something that's going to stay in the nest and parasitize the ants/brood directly.

No clue where this came from, first time i seen it was last night(and i look at the ants a lot every day), but it is clearly not fresh to the nest for as big as it was and starting to develop a new body shape from its pupae phase.
I do rock an open top outworld so there is some potential for outside contaminants to be introduced.

Odds are i won't be able to get a good image due to nest depth and the narrow focal range of the clip on macro i got but i'll keep trying.

Thanks for any input on this,

Yeti

Very exciting find!

Maybe you have a parasite in there?

There is a fantastic book on the topic- Guests of Ants (by Bert Hölldobler). Maybe have a look if any of the great pictures fits with your own "guest"?

Without any more information, I cannot even hazard a guess on what it might be.

You could also search scientific papers for any parasites / guests in the nests of your ant species.

[MyrmecologyMaven]

Very exciting find!

Maybe you have a parasite in there?

There is a fantastic book on the topic- Guests of Ants (by Bert Hölldobler). Maybe have a look if any of the great pictures fits with your own "guest"?

Without any more information, I cannot even hazard a guess on what it might be.

You could also search scientific papers for any parasites / guests in the nests of your ant species.

 

I agree with ernteameise! The Guests Of Ants is by far my favorite book i've read on ants! I'm almost done with it and have enjoyed every second of it!

[Full_Frontal_Yeti]

Well when i got home later i could no longer find this oddity in the nest anywhere.
I recall well what it looks liked as i spent a good deal of time observing it with a magnifying glass, but couldn't get focus with a macro for a photo.

I am extra weirded out now as i can't find anything at all anywhere that even looks like a part of what i saw. Which was very clearly a larval shape and head, slightly larger than a typical ant larvae, starting to take on a different body shape that had a sort of black stinger looking tail thing.
The shape had a slight stink bug/beetle shape starting on the backend, but was still very early in transformation. I just can't imagine what else it could a been besides another critter of some kind.

But nothing here now to show for it at all, not even bits that would have been it. And there's only two or three still feeding larvae left, they could not have eaten it all already if it was being torn up.
And with a freshly cleaned outworld, nothing obvious showed up in the trash either.

It's extra weird to me as the ants are highly visible with no real places to hide things from view if i bring light and the magnifying glass. So where the hell did this thing go?

 

Thanks for the tip on the book to check out.

[Full_Frontal_Yeti]

Nothing fresh here to post really, just some beauty shots of the ants. Still just in waiting on the new outworld. I’m hopeful it gets shipped before the end of March, sense the last update seemed to suggest a few weeks and that was about 6 weeks ago now.

Everyone seems fine. The queen is laying eggs again, and I can see a few new feeding larvae have shown up along side the last 4-5 soon to pupate ones that are the last of the last brood pile before she took a staycation.

As she only lays, I estimate, somewhere between 2-8 eggs a day, it takes a while for the brood pile to show back up as a real pile.

 

 

Here you can see the air gap I have mentioned about the heat cables over the glass. It only touches glass on the edges, but bends naturally up in arc over it. This is all it takes to keep the condensation off. But it is relative to the total surface area of the glass you have. A larger piece of glass cools faster, so it needs more heat applied to it. At some point you need to stick it down closer as you will see on the large nest.

 

Now with heat cable removed, this is the first nest I made them (the first one I could use anyway), and is still a popular one as you see. This is the “deepest” underground section of the nest. Kept at 71-72f , except in summer when I have no good way of keeping it cooler than ambient which can be in the high 80s low 90s at times. The queen is in this chamber about 80%+ of the time. Under the light reflection blur is the entrance to this nest.

 

With the queen occasionally showing up in any one of the other four heart shaped water tower chambers. This one is the most popular nest area in terms of pack density. They really like to cram in here.

 

The most recent nest, I was surprised to see them store seeds in here. They normally keep those in dry chambers and only bring a few at a time into humid chambers to work them open.

 

The large nest. As you can see the dry chambers are at the top of the image, where a copper tube runs through the nest right under all of them. The heat cable is passed through the tube as the main source of heat. However, the larger surface are of the glass cools so quickly, that condensation will form anywhere that gets too far away from a heat cable.  So unlike the smaller glass tops, I had to use bluetak to hold the cable in place and keep it pressed closer to the glass to prevent condensation from forming. They typically kept the large pile of pupae and non-feeding larvae in the hottest area of the nest over the heat pipe. But ever sense the reorg and shrinking of the brood pile, they have been mostly keeping all of them in the watertower areas.

 

And a couple shots of the now lone outworld. You can see The Congregation of the Sun  there on the low platform in the back lower right. Anytime a sun beams into the outworld some of them congregate in it, sometimes climbing the wall into it if it is landing on a side wall.
The blue sponge corks work great in the small but larger bottles you see. I have to pull the sponges back out a bit every few days, as there is a vacuum forming when water leaves but air can't flow back through the waterlogged sponge. No biggie, works great, and they go through a lot of water. The trash pile has been slower to regrow with the shrinking brood pile, and is mostly dead ants at the moment. But i still appreciate how fastidious these ants are. Keeping just one real trash pile, and as far from their nest entrance as they can get it.

 

 

Edited by Full_Frontal_Yeti, February 27 2025 - 11:17 AM.