49 replies to this topic

[Propo.Fol]

Hi ladies and gentlemen, I’ve been having such a good time reading everyone’s journals I figured I’d start my own. I’ve been taking notes and photos the past ~2 months, been meaning to start putting them down here, planning on turning the notes into posts sequentially as I have time. Really love all of the excellent advice and knowledge dispensed in these here journals.

 

I got into antkeeping late june this year (2023). I’ve got a 6 year old daughter who has been super obsessed with all things bugs, and decided to get her an ant farm like I had as a kid – the old milton bradley farm. Ants are obviously really cool and I was hoping to channel her bug appreciation towards ants and other eusocials. As a child I remember loving that thing and being EXTREMELY upset I could not get a queen to have a truly living colony!

 

In 3^rd (ish) grade my father got a free copy of SimAnt on a couple of the old 3.5” floppy discs for a work thing and I remember being absolutely obsessed with the game, and then becoming obsessed with ants in turn. At the time I had read some books that had recommended how to catch your own queen but the details on actually raising them were nonexistent and/or beyond me. One year at sleep-away summer camp I had like a dozen coffee cans and tupper wares all over my room with what was probably a mix of queens and drones – obviously had no clue what I was doing and none of them ever went anywhere.

 

Back to the present, as my daughter and I were waiting for our mail-order ants to arrive, I thought to myself “it’s been a zillion years maybe there's some way to get queens these days” did a quick google search and was absolutely delighted to learn that this whole community exists. You all rock, is what I’m saying.

 

After some reading and copious watching of youtube videos I decided since I was lucky enough to get the antkeeping bug right in the middle of nuptial flight season, I would try and collect my own queens, if able, and if I failed to get any colonies going by fall I would buy online. I live in Brooklyn, NY, in a pretty urban area, so I was concerned it might be hard to find much.

 

Just days later I was out with my wife for groceries, a few brand new test tubes uncomfortably rattling around in my pocket, and less than a block from my home I saw the biggest carpenter ant I had ever seen. She was just casually strolling across the sidewalk towards the bike lane. I’m looking at her and being brand new, can’t tell if she is a queen, wings removed, or a major. I decide better safe than sorry and to collect her. I spend about 5 minutes trying to chase this ant into a test tube, on the middle of a fairly busy sidewalk, as some of our neighbors step around me in confusion. My poor wife watches on, just mortified, pretending she doesn’t know me. It is all good though – I did eventually get the queen into the tube unharmed, and my wife did forgive me for the odd behavior, a few eyerolls aside.

 

This was a few months ago (~June 20^th) and it’s funny in hindsight I couldn’t tell if she was a queen (picture below) – I was SO SURE I was imagining it and she was actually a major and I was just engaging in wishful thinking, when looking now it is so obviously a queen. Posted to reddit for ID help “HEY IS THIS A QUEEN???” and got a bunch of “uhh..yes” and the like back and was pretty elated – although still half-convinced the people on reddit were maybe also wrong. Consensus was likely C. pennsylvanicus.

 

 

Regardless, into a tube she went and then into a nice dark closet, whereas I made my first really stupid new antkeeper mistake. The “making the test tube setup” video I had seen warned the tubes could flood and drown the queen, and not to over-insert the cotton ball. I figured sure makes sense, and pushed the ball in almost all the way, leaving the very tip of the ball dry, believing the fluid would naturally saturate the rest of the ball. So any fellow new keepers reading this heed my failure – nope, doesn’t work that way. Gotta make sure the ball is totally saturated.

 

I was very good and left her alone all week, and she looked great when I checked 7 days later. I even got a temperature probe to monitor the drawer (76-81F depending on time of day/AC status). I decided against telling my 6yo, who was tearing apart our local parks looking for a queen too. Figured she couldn’t handle having to leave them alone in a drawer. Might have been for the best as she has since become especially obsessed with our local camponotus populations. Regardless, the second week I checked in on her she had lain a large group of eggs, but was sadly dead. The inside of the tube (and the dead queen and her eggs) were all desiccated and the cotton ball was dry at the tip. I guess at least I understand why it happened and won’t do it again.

 

I ended up fessing up the whole situation to my daughter (admitting mistakes is probably good parenting right?) but she took it well and was at least fascinated to see the remains of the queen and the eggs.

 

Took longer than I expected to write, but I'll try and keep throwing out posts as I have time.  Thanks for reading!

[UtahAnts]

Welcome to the forum and best wishes to your upcoming colony! Carpenter ants are fantastic.

[ANTdrew]

Welcome to FC and this crazy hobby! Don’t give up on finding queens yet. This is a great time to find Lasius neoniger and Crematogaster cerasi queens on hot, humid afternoons following rain.

[Virginian_ants]

Welcome! Don't use cork as a test tube stopper I've had colonies smother because of it, use cotton and they will be able to breath and won't escape. I love Camponotus and they are a fun and rewarding species to keep. Good luck.

[Propo.Fol]

Thanks for the kind words everyone!  Just to clarify the carpenter queen is dead -- she died due to (i am fairly sure) my incorrect setup of the tube -- I had not inserted the cotton ball 100% of the way into the water and the inside of the tube became bone dry.  Camponotus are so freakin awesome and I am heartbroken I screwed up like that.  Haven't seen any more Camponotus queens since then (the Camponotus queen was found in late june).  At least it gives me something to look forward to catching in future seasons.

 

Welcome! Don't use cork as a test tube stopper I've had colonies smother because of it, use cotton and they will be able to breath and won't escape. I love Camponotus and they are a fun and rewarding species to keep. Good luck.

Thanks!  Yeah absolutely.  I did use cotton in the final setup -- photo was my catchin' container.   I really wish this colony had worked out, my daughter is absolutely infatuated with carpenters.  She will follow them around the playground and shoo other children away when she is worried they might step on them.

 

Welcome to FC and this crazy hobby! Don’t give up on finding queens yet. This is a great time to find Lasius neoniger and Crematogaster cerasi queens on hot, humid afternoons following rain.

Thanks for the recommendations -- I've been keeping my eyes peeled for neoniger and may perhaps have one already (will post about as I catch up).  The C cerasi rec is especially helpful, those look really neat and I was surprised to see there are indeed numerous reports of their sighting in NYC

[ANTdrew]

Central Park must certainly have Crematogaster.

[Propo.Fol]

After my humbling/heartbreaking introduction to the hobby in june, I kept on the lookout. I had a few near misses – I saw a winged ant deep in the subway, of all places, but had nothing with which to collect it. I saw a couple of dead alates in spiderwebs on the side of buildings. But mostly I had no luck and was getting bummed.

 

On July 14^th I was walking home at dusk after work. I reach my home block. The block is deserted except for an old lady with a cane, and right as I pass her I see something queen-like. I take another 4-5 steps before my brain registers and come to a stop. The old lady is moving very slowly, like generously 0mph. I turn around and slowly walk back towards the ant (and the old lady) squinting, trying to find it again. I locate it within a pace of this old lady, and sure enough it is clearly a queen.

 

Now, I just want to stop and point out this is EXTREMELY WEIRD and not at all acceptable behavior on my part from this ladies perspective. A young(ish) dude on a street alone in NY doesn’t just stop after passing the only other human on the street, turn around, and walk back towards them. That is all sorts of red flags, especially for an old lady. My socially inept brain is sort of just catching up with all this as I draw next to her and find the queen. I look up from the sidewalk at this point and this lady has stopped, turned towards me, and has her cane cocked up over her shoulder on one side. She’s literally getting ready to clock me with the cane.

 

Obviously as my brain catches up with all this I feel bad/embarrassed about the whole situation and stammer out an “Oh! So sorry!” and I take a big step back. I decide at this point crouching down and trying to collect the queen is probably(?) a deescalation of the situation as an idiot catching bugs is significantly less threatening. I crouch and start chasing this queen around like a dummy, using a paintbrush to herd her in. Poor grandma decides I’m not worth hitting with her cane and thankfully shuffles off down the block.

 

I felt terrible, and probably lucky I didn’t get domed for my sins. And while she didn’t seem to be the antkeeping type, I’ll say it here – seriously, so very, very sorry about that!

 

Embarrassingly, it turned out within 10 feet of this whole event I could have collected dozens of these queens. They were basically everywhere. Oops! I only had 4 tubes on me so collected 4. Pretty much ran the last 50 feet home to show my treasures off to a very unimpressed wife. I then discovered the plug had come off one tube and a queen had escaped into my backpack/apartment/the world somewhere. My wife reserved the right to murder me in the future if we ended up with an infestation of ants, although she was mollified by my (possibly true) reassurances that it was highly unlikely the missing queen would found in our apartment.

 

Anyway below are some pictures of the new loves of my life. I posted them to the “Ants & Antkeeping” discord ID channel. The consensus was probably Laisus americanus (recall this story/catch was from mid July). They were all roughly 7mm.  Any thoughts based on these photos? Apparently americanus is common around here so I’m on board with it. Regardless, into tubes and into the drawer they all went, except this time I was super careful to soak the cotton ball through 100%.

 

 

 

 

 

[Propo.Fol]

I wanted to append this to the last post but no matter what i did the images kept getting all jumbled and out of order so splitting it out here:

 

The morning after I rudely terrified grandma being oblivious (so back in July) I was taking my daughter to a birthday party and lo and behold we find another queen. Immediately clear it is another laisus, probably same species as before. Also 7ish mm. Maybe half a mile from the last location. She was just nonchalantly crossing the sidewalk – I wonder if she was part of the prior night’s nuptial flight and was still looking for a place to found. Picture below. I think same species? Any opinions?

 

Just to add a little to the story, this one was the quickest/easiest to catch yet. I tried for like 20 seconds to herd the little lady into a test tube paintbrush style and my daughter just gave me an exasperated “daaaaaad!” and scooped her up in her hands and put her into the test tube. Score one for the 6 year old.

 

Into the dark drawer she went. I decided at this point we had to track the different queens so labeled the first three L-1 through L-3 and the one my daughter caught as L-K. I’m really hoping L-K founds successfully since my daughter and I caught her together!

 

my least bad macro photo yet:

 

some other angles of the straggler laisus:

 

[ANTdrew]

To differentiate L. neoniger from L. americanus, look at the antennal scapes. Americanus will have no erect hairs on the scape, while neoniger will have many hairs. Don’t forget you also have the invasive Lasius emarginatus in NYC, aka the ManhattAnt!

[Propo.Fol]

To differentiate L. neoniger from L. americanus, look at the antennal scapes. Americanus will have no erect hairs on the scape, while neoniger will have many hairs. Don’t forget you also have the invasive Lasius emarginatus in NYC, aka the ManhattAnt!

 

Cool thanks -- I may borrow a microscope from a friend and see if I can't figure it out down the line.  Ill see if I can get my macro lense to focus in on a scape next time I check on them although I'm guessing that is beyond my abilities, worth a shot though!

 

As to emarginatus, that's interesting -- one of the gentlemen in the discord thought they were emarginatus and not americanus.  Your mention of them led me to an article in the NY Times of all places, lol, which was fascinating.  I'm posting a gift link here (hope that's allowed) about the "ManHattant."  Popular reporting on things like this are often bad, but at least according to the NYT emarginatus is super common here and I had absolutely no idea.

 

https://www.nytimes....&smid=url-share ( In NYC Apartments, the Ants Go Matching Up.)

 

The workers seems to be visually pretty distinct so hopefully if I am lucky enough that one of them founds I should be able to solve this mystery.

[Propo.Fol]

Ok, so here is my last post to “catch up” with the current date, minus some updates on the actual colonies!

 

About a week after I found the lovely laisus ladies, the family and I were taking a trip to visit some relatives who live in the boonies on long island. So I packed up all my ant stuff figuring it would be my best chance of the summer to find some queens. In fact they have a pool and I’d read here that pools are a great “queen trap.”

 

The very first morning it had rained overnight and lo and behold, there were small, black, sleek-bodied queens and drones plastered liberally on any and every surface, stuck to any remaining drops of water on the deck, concrete pathway, or floating in the pool. I found them at roughly 7am. Literally had to be hundreds of them. My daughter and I went gathering and collected 6 from various locations (basically all pulled out of puddles on the deck or from the pool). We actually found two who were still attached to males floating in the pool which was really neat to see – wish I had thought to take a photo. They all still had their wings. This time around we had a pair of entomology forceps and its crazy how much easier it was to collect them – trivial to gently grab them by the wings with the forceps and shove ‘em into their new homes.

 

We only grabbed 6 thinking it was our first day and I only had ~15 test tubes packed. Sadly, while we looked each morning and dusk for the rest of the trip, no further queens were found. We even did some rock flipping and potted-plant moving but only found established colonies which we left alone. We did find numerous drones of various species (or possibly very small wasps?) in the pool a few times, but that was it.

 

See below for some photos of the six queens. Discord was kind enough to identify as Tetramorium immigrans quickly and with high confidence.

 

Next year when we return I think I may just bring a blacklight setup and see how that goes. Hope my daughter hasn’t gotten bored with all this by then!

 

 

 

 

[azzaaazzzz00]

Yea that's Tetramorium immigrans. Nice find! 

How the heck have you caught 10 times more queens in the past three days than I have this year???

[Propo.Fol]

Yea that's Tetramorium immigrans. Nice find! 

How the heck have you caught 10 times more queens in the past three days than I have this year???

 

I Havent!  The Laisus queens were found in July (July 14th and July 15th) and the teramoriums were found about a week later (7/24).  The Camponotus queen was from back in June.  Sorry if that wasnt clear.  I really wanted to document how my "queen catching" has gone as a new keeper, especially given the urban environment.  All the posts so far have been "catch-up" from notes I've kept spanning about 2 months.

 

Actually been on a dry spell since.  Honestly if I can get out of the season with A T. immigrans and a laisus colony I will be thrilled, from what everyone says here they sound like great ants for an inexperienced keeper.

[azzaaazzzz00]

Oh, I might not have read it carefully enough lol

[Propo.Fol]

Ok so I wanted to update on how the founding processes were going and ask a few Q's.  These photos are my most recent (taken 8/19/23)

 

All 4 of the laisus queens are alive and have brood, including 3 who have pupae(woohoo!!! ) although I am worried about the one my daughter caught.  Of the 6 T. immigrans queens, one died within the first week, one has no brood, and the last 4 all have some combination of eggs and larva.  Only one removed her wings, and I am concerned, I saw in another journal ANTdrew(i think! can't find it now!) mentioned immigrans who don't remove their wings often don't found.    I am *hoping* that since they were all rescued from a swimming pool, maybe the almost drowning experience interrupted their normal de-winging behavior.  I did find two of these queens still attached to males, which makes me hope at least two are fertile, but I did not record which two these were at collection.    

 

So first, L-K, the one my daughter caught -- I am worried about her.  She has a good egg pile and seems to be taking care of them, but no pupae and possibly no larvae.  Unfortunately my pictures of her brood didn't turn out well but I could not see anything but eggs.  Am I wrong, are some of these just small larva?  Regardless all of her sisters have pupae and had big larvae in prior weeks while her pile doesn't seem to be developing.  Fingers crossed for her!

 

 

Next up her three sisters (Technically just photos of L2/L3, L1 was similar but I took bad photos). It is the second week in a row I've seen those beautiful cocoons so while it is likely still early, there is maybe a small chance of nanitics next time   

 

 

 

As to the T. Immigrans, of the four still looking promising, my first photo is of "A" who has taken off one wing, but not the other. Do I consider that half a good sign, or half a bad sign?? My 6 y/o thinks this is the funniest thing in the world, for the record. One thing I noticed with all of the immigrans is their eggs are such a different color compared to the laisus, where they're all a nice uniform cream color. Also the egg piles tend to be a little less neatly organized (not to say unorganized, just less so). Hope this isn't a bad sign!

Queen C is the one who removed her wings. Only so-so photos sorry!

 

 

 

Queen D, did not remove wings. Brood pile is bigger than photo looks she happens to be covering most of it here!

 

 

Queen "E" -- sort of neat she's got most of her brood shoved up in a little crevice in the cotton at the non dependent (uhh, higher end?) of the tube. Wonder if the water is transmitting through the cotton better there at the top edge.  Was neat watching her tending her brood against gravity.

 

 

Anyway that's where my ladies are at (or were as of ~5 days ago).  My daughter is 100% convinced we are going to have "baby ants" when we check this week.  I'm guessing it is too soon tho..we will see!  I stole some crickets from our neighbors bearded dragon's food stache and froze them so we have insect protein on hand -- hope I'm not getting TOO ahead of myself.  I've also got toooons of fish food, much of which is insect based. 

 

Our ritual at this point is to check in on them on Saturday mornings.  My daughter barrels into our bedroom around 6am and jumps on me until I get up.  I want to get awake and caffeinated before we check on the ants but I get to endure the childlike "can we check now?  how about now?  ok....how about now!!?" every 30 seconds or so until I'm ready.  Good times 

 

[ANTdrew]

Queens rescued from drowning often do not remove their wings, so no need to worry about your Tetramorium. They all look well on their way. What temp are you keeping the queens at?

[Propo.Fol]

Queens rescued from drowning often do not remove their wings, so no need to worry about your Tetramorium. They all look well on their way. What temp are you keeping the queens at?

 

Whew happy to hear that.  So they all currently live in a drawer in my bedroom.  Daytime temps are probably 79-81F on average.  My wife has some sort of malfunction where she can only sleep in frigid artic conditions and cranks the AC all night, but the drawer "only" falls to 76F by morning.

 

I've considered moving them to my living room which is warmer, but the living room is subject to the chaos of two small children.  I've got a heating cable but have been reluctant to use it within an enclosed wooden space.

[azzaaazzzz00]

I believe you should be fine at that temp. Also I have a Tetramorium queen that has not shed her wings, but has around 40 workers now. Winged or wingless isn't that good of an indicator of whether or not a queen is fertile.

[Voidley]

Really enjoying reading this journal. As an ant keeper from NYC who also caught their first queens this year I definitely relate to a lot of your journey thus far (minus the having a daughter part lol). Definitely looking forward to more updates and good luck on your colonies!

[Propo.Fol]

 

Really enjoying reading this journal. As an ant keeper from NYC who also caught their first queens this year I definitely relate to a lot of your journey thus far (minus the having a daughter part lol). Definitely looking forward to more updates and good luck on your colonies!

 

 

Awesome, glad to hear it, not gonna lie I saw this response and ran off to see everything you've found this year   It looks like you've really found a good variety which is encouraging -- I've been starting to think the only queens I'd ever find in the city would be laisus of some sort!

 

What are you using for photos, just a cellphone + macro clip on or something else?  You're consistently getting really clear detailed photos in all your threads.