16 replies to this topic

[AsdinAnts]

This will be the journal of my newly caught B. patagonicus queens, they are two days old, seeing as I caught them on Wednesday and Thursday. They already have a couple of eggs, and I have around 7-8 queens in one test tube, 3-4 queens in another, and 2 queens in the last test tube.

[AsdinAnts]

The brachymyrmex patagonicus are doing fairly well, both the colonies are growing nicely.

[AsdinAnts]

I feed the queens some sugar water like 10 minutes ago, and they completely ABSORBED that thing! Anyways, both the colonies have early staged larvae and I’m excited (not rlly) to keep some b. patagonicus..!

[AsdinAnts]

I came back to them in order to take more pictures, and what do I find? The sugar water literally touching their water source, and a queen just walking straight through it. 

 

(The brood is hidden under the queens)

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[AsdinAnts]

sorry for the less than low quality pictures 

 

My b. patagonicus 5 queen colony has larvae and a small pile of eggs. All of them have kept their wings, so I have absolutely no idea if they are mated or not. I know wings aren’t a good sign of being mated or not since some queens keep their wings through the founding stage.

 

My three queen colony is doing fantastic. They have a pretty good batch of eggs, and I think some small larvae.

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[AsdinAnts]

Brachymyrmex colony with less queens are doing fine, they have a whole bunch of larvae and eggs. I don’t know if I will be keeping a colony of these, since i’m not as interested in brachymyrmex because of their small size. Who knows though, I might keep them.

 

The second colony with more queens is not doing as well. They have a few larvae and eggs, but i’ve noticed two dead queens. Both of the queens bodies were torn and some parts like their gasters were found missing.

[AsdinAnts]

I’m pretty sure my colony 2 has pupae, they are hiding them, so I can’t really tell if it’s the queens gasters or not.

I think I’m actually going to keep a colony of these, since they are pretty sturdy ants.

[AsdinAnts]

Colony 1

The queens are doing very well, they now have 2 cocoons (my other post was a scam  )

They also have quite a few larvae and eggs, i'm waiting for their nanitics to hatch in order to feed them.

 

 

Colony 2

The second colony has been cannibalizing their own queens, they have some larvae and eggs, but most of the queens in here are probably infertile.

 

(I will hopefully add pictures tomorrow)

[Stubyvast]

Wow good luck with this colony! Are they semi-claustral? I'd suggest connecting a tiny outworld just in case, so they can forage for protein/honey without messing up the nest. If not then doing great! Hope these guys do awesome!

[AsdinAnts]

here is the picture of colony 1!

The little ball thing on the side is the cocoon, I didn’t want to tilt the test tube to much to take the picture.

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Edited by AsdinAnts, June 14 2024 - 9:07 AM.

[AsdinAnts]

Wow good luck with this colony! Are they semi-claustral? I'd suggest connecting a tiny outworld just in case, so they can forage for protein/honey without messing up the nest. If not then doing great! Hope these guys do awesome!

Rover ants are not semi-claustral, I just fed them honey during their founding to give them a bit of a boost, thanks!

[AsdinAnts]

the cocoons are still just cocoons, and they also killed one of their queens.

[GOCAMPONOTUS]

R.I.P queen, hope the workers  eclose soon!

Edited by GOCAMPONOTUS, June 27 2024 - 9:38 AM.

[AsdinAnts]

REBOOTED!

Around a month ago, I found a whole ton of brachymyrmex queens. I put some in a bunch of test tubes, and they just recently started hatching their nanitics.

 

This is the largest colony that I have rn.

 

They contain 6 queens, some workers, and a whole bunch of pupae, larvae, and eggs.

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[cooIboyJ]

Nice! I also have a multi queen brachymyrmex patagonicus colony (~20 queens) which have a huge brood pile. I hope your colony does well!

[AsdinAnts]

here is that brachymyrmex colony now.

I suspect that there's two queens of another species though, two of the queens are lighter than the rest. The queens that are lighter also have lighter ish workers, but they're cooperating with the patagonicus.

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[cooIboyJ]

I think that what you think are other species might actually be different subspecies with different coloration.