22 replies to this topic

[Izzy]

I've been trying to decide which of my ants to start a journal on, and although the anting season here has wrapped up I think I have decided. I'm going to highlight my journey in raising the Camponotus sansabeanus queens I found this year.

 

On June 30th in the deserts of Utah I flipped a large rock and came across a massive mature colony of thousands of beautiful golden Carpenter ants with lots of brood, and huge majors with black heads. Being my first year anting, I was stunned at the size of this colony and to have found something so different than what I am used to seeing everywhere: black ants.

 

I was thrilled when an hour later I stumbled upon a grove of juniper trees and after flipping hundreds of rocks, and dripping with sweat, I managed to capture 12 queens! I got more than I needed knowing that sometimes they die or end up infertile. When I got home from collecting, I noted that one of them appeared dead on its back and made no movement when I picked it up with tweezers. I almost threw her into the trash thinking her to be dead, but decided to put her into a test tube as well. Honestly, I thought I was being dumb, she was obviously dead. I kept them in box and didn't check on them for 3 months. 

 

To my surprise, when I opened the box 3 months later, the "dead" queen was alive! I was honestly so shocked, but glad I had trusted my gut feeling! All the queens had laid a clutch of eggs. After the three month mark I started checking weekly while waiting for the first workers to eclose. During this time two of the queens ate their brood and failed to produce anymore eggs prior to hibernation. Hopefully they will come spring. The rest went on to produce ninitics.

 

 

It was interesting to see the diversity of how many workers each queen produced. I had a range of every number from 1-7 workers depending on colony. I decided to keep the two colonies with 7 workers and the one with 6 as my own, and hopefully to sell the rest. I did notice that the colonies who only produced 1 and 2 workers had much bigger workers. They didn't appear to look anything like the ninitics of the other colonies at all. I know that the caste of ant is determined by how much protein it receives during its larval stage, but it was cool to see that the two queens who had less workers to feed essentially skipped having ninitics at all and produced workers that were bigger, had darker exoskeletons, and appeared more like the workers I had seen in the desert.

 

Once I had decided which to keep, I had Utah Ants build me two formicarium for my desert carpenter ants. He did a great job and I love having the window above to let in light and for easier photography.

 

On November 1st, they went into hibernation in my mini fridge. I'm anxiously awaiting the end of their hibernation! They have quickly become some of my favorite ants in my collection. I think they're stunning to look at. I would love to successfully raise a large colony of these beauties, so any help, advice, or suggestions to ensure the success of these colonies would be appreciated!

[Izzy]

I didn't have much to post on these colonies until now, but they're finally starting to feel more active. I kept them in diapause from November 1st to February 28th, along with the other queens in tubes I had caught. I was happy to see that there were no worker deaths at all among all of the colonies, and that only one of the queens (which had originally eaten its brood prior to diapause) had died during diapause.

 

This left me with only one brood-less queen which had also previously eaten her brood. She continued to fail to produce any eggs in a test tube setup until I moved her into a container full of dirt at which point she promptly laid eggs. Unfortunately, she died today from what I suspect may have been desiccation. I thought I had hydrated the dirt setup enough, as it was moist, but my guess is she wasn't able to drink from the dirt and I had forgotten to give her access to a liquid feeder as a back up.

 

This is the third Camponotus queen I suspect I have lost to desiccation in my year and a half of ant keeping. I'm not sure what the correlation is but in all three cases they seemed to have at least one limb that would no longer function. They would begin dragging themselves around awkwardly until their death, which usually followed the next day. I suspected lack of water as the cause of death in every case because of some oversight of mine in hydration, and because they promptly would drink water when provided to them. However in every case it appeared that once they had lost function of their limb(s) it was too late for them and death swiftly followed.

 

On a more positive note, all of the remaining colonies seem to be thriving. They all have significant brood piles, and the two in the formicaria seem to be gaining confidence as I often see them in their outworld more and more during the day. I know Camponotus tend to be more nocturnal, which has always been a bit sad because I never would see them doing much in the day. I would either wake up to the food I provided them missing, or I would have to stay up to observe their behavior. They're definitely still more active at night, but its nice to see them being more active at day.

 

Here is a pile of brood from one of the colonies.

 

I took the eggs of the dead queen from the dirt setup and placed them in the outworld of the other colony not pictured here. They seem to be gone so I'm hoping they added them to their pile, but they may have eaten them. Its hard to tell at this point.

 

Here is a photo of trophallaxis between a nanitic and queen

 

Overall, I'm excited for the growth of these colonies. They're my most successful Camponotus to date and showing promise of crushing that record in the near future. I've fed them a diet of mealworms, super worms, crickets, dubia roaches, and found that they were even receptive to freeze dried bloodworms. I haven't tried the bloodworm soup yet, but I was glad to see they accepted them in freeze dried form (in fact all my colonies of mixed genus went wild for them the first time I fed them freeze dried bloodworms, but seemed less receptive the second time).

 

Also here is a picture of the largest queen of the Camponotus sansabeanus I caught. I don't feel like this picture does it justice, but she is an absolute monster. She only had one worker in her first batch, and while the ninatics of this species kind of remind me of the color of Myrmecocystus, this lone worker received enough nutrients to become a normal worker with an orange and black exoskeleton, and the colony skipped having any nanitics at all. For reference she is in a 20x150 mm test tube.

 

I may end up keeping her as well as I'm curious to see how she progresses. Is there any correlation between the size of a queen and maybe the health of their colony or anything? Surprisingly, the most productive queens of the twelve I caught were all average sized, where as two of the biggest queens actually had the least workers but they were normal workers (not ninatics) and both queens lack as much orange pigmentation and almost appear to have none.

Edited by Izzy, April 2 2024 - 9:04 PM.

[UtahAnts]

Fantastic pictures! Hoping the best for all those colonies.

 

It's a bit hard to make them out but those two large queens might be Camponotus vicinus? C. vicinus and sansabeanus queens do look similar. It would explain the large queen and nanitic size, along with the darker worker coloration.

[Izzy]

Fantastic pictures! Hoping the best for all those colonies.

 

It's a bit hard to make them out but those two large queens might be Camponotus vicinus? C. vicinus and sansabeanus queens do look similar. It would explain the large queen and nanitic size, along with the darker worker coloration.

 

Thank you! The macro lens I have is really hard to work with sometimes. I feel like the depth of field is so small that with large ants like Camponotus its hard to get them entirely in focus unless they're parallel with the camera. It works great for tiny ants like Monomorium though!

 

You know, that started to occur to me. Maybe those two aren't Camponotus sansabeanus at all. I found them all together in a Juniper-Pinyon Pine forest all next to each other a day or two after a large flight so I assumed they were, but maybe I should get some better pictures for identification on those two and see if they in fact are.

 

They do look different than the other two Camponotus vicinus queens I have found that were identified on here as vicinus, but isn't vicinus a pretty large group complex with lots of variation? The coloring on them definitely feels more orange than red, but it could still be some kind of Camponotus vicinus.

[GOCAMPONOTUS]

It looks like some color variation vicinus. I have kept many C.vicinus and this colony looks like one as the Gaster's look a little darker than how a sansa gaster should be.

[Izzy]

Time for an update. The colonies are both thriving and doing great!

 

The colony I keep on the left has more than doubled in population since the last post. They started with 7 workers and are now at 15, and have lots of big larvae with cocoons so more are on the way! They're growing much faster than I anticipated Camponotus to grow.

 

The colony on the right hasn't grown as fast, despite being the colony I gave the extra eggs to from another deceased queen. They do have new workers though, and they're the first colony to have a worker of a different caste. I'm still unsure if its just the first non-nanitic worker, or is it a major that is on the smaller side due to Camponotus being polymorphic? The majors in this species have completely black heads, and while this one's head is darker, it isn't completely black. I suspect it only recently hatched and hasn't darkened yet, as I did not see this worker during my last check up on them 3 days ago, so its entirely possible it may darken still. I read somewhere that Camponotus can sometimes have a medium sized caste as well. Has anyone else heard of this or know anything about it? The worker in question can be seen in the top middle of the picture below. To me it seems a little too small to be a major, but maybe I'm wrong.

 

Excited for the growth of these colonies! They may need a bigger outworld soon as the last few times I've fed them there always seems to be several workers in the outworld now and one of them wanders out.

[AsdinAnts]

The worker that you’re talking about is most likely a median. They are not exactly workers, nor are they majors. Medians are like a cross between them.

[Izzy]

The worker that you’re talking about is most likely a median. They are not exactly workers, nor are they majors. Medians are like a cross between them.

 

Median! That's the word I was looking for. I had never heard about these until recently. Pretty cool!

[ANTdrew]

The worker that you’re talking about is most likely a median. They are not exactly workers, nor are they majors. Medians are like a cross between them.

All the castes you’re talking about are workers. A better distinction would be: minors, medians, and majors.

[Izzy]

Well, its that time again. Update time!

I recently moved both colonies out of the formicaria Utah Ants made. They served them well, but the outworlds were starting to smell strongly of ammonia since I probably didn't do as good of a job on keeping up on them as I should have. They could have stayed in the nest for a while longer probably, but I didn't want to break the silicon seal from the outworld to the nest by taking the outworld off to clean it so I just moved them into two different nests.

 

First I moved the smaller colony into a basic founding formicarium that I created recently, as can be seen here:

 

You can see the Median pretty clearly here. I've counted 11 workers in total with about 7 or 8 cocoons.

 

The other colony I moved into a Foranto nest I purchased recently.

 

This colony is doing incredibly well. Right after they moved in I counted 27 workers! This is more than double of the other colony which is the second best colony I have. Unfortunately two workers died after the move, one I think from repeatedly climbing the walls in the outworld and falling onto the plastic ground before I could put sand in. I noticed that she was alive but her legs seemed to be broken and she seemed unable to move and soon died. The other later from an unknown cause. I suspect natural causes since I caught the queen about 11 months ago so its possible it was one of the first workers. I'm hoping that's it as these are the first losses in either colony. Initially they were storing their dead in the corner of the outworld but I noticed this morning they moved them into the nest. The Foranto nest might be too big, so I may try to move them back into the cleaned nests they were in before.

 

I haven't kept a colony in a dry formicarium yet. I'm hoping they will do fine here as they have a water tower outside they can get water from, but does anyone have experience with this? Will Camponotus do fine in this setup? I seem to think they will but wanted to see if anyone had experience there.

 

In other news, I got some better pictures of the big queens and their workers that I thought were sansabeanus but we determined were probably vicinus. Its interesting to note how the difference in size of the sansabeanus and this species has had on the worker count. The vicinus have only 3 and 4 workers per colony where the sansabeanus have 11 and 25.

 

Anyway, I love the way these ants look. They just seem more vibrant than the other vicinus I've caught so I'm excited to raise them up as well. I may end up moving them into the Utah Ants formicaria since it worked out great for the sansabeanus.

 

[bmb1bee]

I personally wouldn't keep C. sansabeanus in a wooden nest since they're ground nesting and don't live in wood in the wild, but nice colonies!

[Izzy]

I personally wouldn't keep C. sansabeanus in a wooden nest since they're ground nesting and don't live in wood in the wild, but nice colonies!

 

Oh good to know!

 

I guess I did catch all of them from flipping rocks on the ground after a flight, so that makes sense. But they were always underneath juniper trees so I figured they had some connection to the trees/wood as well.

[ANTdrew]

Camponotus workers try to climb like crazy when they sense they are dying. That worker was already on its way out. The falling did not kill it.

[Izzy]

Camponotus workers try to climb like crazy when they sense they are dying. That worker was already on its way out. The falling did not kill it.

 

That is very interesting! Glad to hear it. I was hoping it wasn't that. Is there any reason we know of why they do that?

[GOCAMPONOTUS]

I love these keep up the good work!

[ANTdrew]

It’s an instinct of theirs to get as far away from the nest as possible when they’re dying. It’s a way of avoiding contamination or the spread of illnesses. Captive ants can’t get far away, so they run up and down walls frantically.

[Izzy]

It’s an instinct of theirs to get as far away from the nest as possible when they’re dying. It’s a way of avoiding contamination or the spread of illnesses. Captive ants can’t get far away, so they run up and down walls frantically.

 

That makes sense, it's too bad they violated their dying wish by moving them back into the colony.   Probably on me though with it being too big haha

[Izzy]

It's been about two months since my last update I figured it was time for another.

Both colonies seem to be doing well. But the Right Colony has really taken off. I give them identical meals so its interesting to see the difference.

 

We'll start with the Left Colony. Here we can see their small pile of eggs and the queen, who looks big and healthy! This colony was the dominate colony out of all 10 sansabeanus queens I caught by a long shot, but they have now fallen behind the Right Colony. Last I reported they had 25 workers, they have only increased their numbers to 31 in two months, and their egg pile doesn't seem as big as the other colony.

 

They do however have a very big larvae and a very big cocoon which I am hoping will be my first major, but its possible it might be their first median as well.

 

I've noticed the Left Colony doesn't appear to have as strong of an appetite as the Right Colony. I rarely see them feeding after I've added the food to their outworld, where as with the Right Colony they are on it immediately and quickly recruit other workers to join in eating up the protein. This colony I also moved out of the Foranto nest and into an identical home made formicarium I created.

 

Now the Right Colony, oh my these gals are crazy. They have gone from 11 workers to 38! Their egg and brood piles are much larger, and it appears that everyone is very well fed as their gasters all appear very full and large. They have 2 medians, but no majors, but one of those cocoons is looking fairly big so we'll see what it ends up hatching from it. I'm excited to see if they will continue to grow as quickly.

 

 

 

 

 

[Mushu]

I really like this variant if that’s the workers true colors. Are your pictures of the workers neutral colors due to lack of light? I thought thr workers id this species is a bit more on the yellowish side. Colony appears to be coming along nicely, keep up the good work.

[Izzy]

I really like this variant if that’s the workers true colors. Are your pictures of the workers neutral colors due to lack of light? I thought thr workers id this species is a bit more on the yellowish side. Colony appears to be coming along nicely, keep up the good work.

 

Thank you! I had some overhead lighting in this picture and I think it does represent their appearance well. Are there many color variants for Camponotus sansabeanus? I think I've heard some people say there is a darker variant.