43 replies to this topic

[Ernteameise]

The colony is in diapause now (or so I thought).

I do not think they have grown anymore since the last pupae enclosed in September. But as stated above, they might be ready for their XL Mini Hearth upgrade next year.

Not much is happening (these are Camponotus, they love nothing more than sitting around), so I only updated when I thought something was worth sharing.

"Recycling" of the Messor alates- my Messor colony produced their first queen alates this year. I decided to share these around. As per usual with insect food, I freeze them to kill humanely and then shortly dip them in boiling water. The Messor colony is healthy, so I do not expect too many issues. Plus, ants eat other ants all the time. There are even ants specialized in hunting other ants.

These Camponotus were very interested in their royal dinner, not sure why, they only have the small diapause rested larvae left and as far as I understood, these won't develop before next spring.

[Full_Frontal_Yeti]

I would assume the extra interest in this is the ant POV. For ant POV, any information about the presence and activities of other possibly competitor or predator ants in your area would probably be important to you.

Also some ants (not sure about yours) greatly concern themselevs with what is or is not allowed to be near/around their nest area. The response could be motivated less by food behaviors and more by a danger/problem avoidance behavior. Like how many mammal mommies will eat the baby poop, so it's not giving off odors that would attract predators to the den. Maybe something in a queen ant specifically gives them this reaction to remover her from their area ASAP.

[Ernteameise]

I would assume the extra interest in this is the ant POV. For ant POV, any information about the presence and activities of other possibly competitor or predator ants in your area would probably be important to you.

Also some ants (not sure about yours) greatly concern themselevs with what is or is not allowed to be near/around their nest area. The response could be motivated less by food behaviors and more by a danger/problem avoidance behavior. Like how many mammal mommies will eat the baby poop, so it's not giving off odors that would attract predators to the den. Maybe something in a queen ant specifically gives them this reaction to remover her from their area ASAP.

Great theory....

but.... they dragged the body into their nest. The bits were just sitting there, inside the nest, I did not observe the arrested larvae feeding. Maybe the workers ate some of it. And when they were finished, they dragged the leftovers back up again. I would not call this avoidance and removal behavior. I looked more like food greed.

[OwlThatLikesAnts]

From my experiences, ants don't really eat that much protein when they don't have many larva, plus they are soon going into hibernation, so I don't see any reasons why they will gather protein if there are a little amount of larva. The protein could also be a waste of "repletes" (quotations because they have no replete cast) when they could just be storing sugars so they can get through the winter. Also the genus Camponotus has special stomach enzymes so they can live on a diet of mostly sugars also giving the name "Sugar ants"

 

I have read that ants can use also their larva to recycle the nutrients of other ant's exoskeleton by feeding it to them, usually the reason why some parts of the insect's exoskeleton disappear after feeding your ants.

Edited by OwlThatLikesAnts, Yesterday, 9:06 AM.