13 replies to this topic

[evanmancini2011]

I have a young colony of pogonomyrmex occidentalis ants and want to brood boost them. Does anyone have any tips on how to get brood from outdoor pogonomyrmex occidentalis ant colonies? 

[Stubyvast]

I expect that getting brood is similar to other species. One way that might work is to place a flat stone on top of the nest, sunken enough to act as another chamber. Then, as the sun heats the rock, the ants will move the brood up to it, as it become the right conditions. After about a week or so, remove the rock, and voila! You've got lots of brood (Just grab 'em quick before the ants evacuate them)!

I don't know if this works for this species specifically, but you can give it a try!

Good luck to you!

[Ants_Dakota]

I have a young colony of pogonomyrmex occidentalis ants and want to brood boost them. Does anyone have any tips on how to get brood from outdoor pogonomyrmex occidentalis ant colonies? 

I would encourage you to let nature do its thing and patiently wait for your queen to rear her own workers. Pogonomyrmex grow at a medium pace, not slow at all by any means, and it is far more rewarding to see the growth that your queen can pump out than force a fast explosion. Beyond that, breaking into established colonies opens ant nests up to attack from all sorts of insects, bacteria, and fungi, and can also introduce mites and other molds into your ant setup. I only break into colonies when absolutely necessary(parasitic species). I hope you consider!

[rptraut]

Brood Boosting

 

Hello Evanmancini2011;

 

I understand the arguments for and against brood boosting, but my experiences might help you to decide what you want to do.   Although it is rewarding to watch a queen start a colony unadulterated, some ants like Camponotus are slow growing and their strength can certainly be aided by brood boosting.  Last season I was able to take cocoons from one of my older colonies and boost two of my second-year colonies to great advantage.    I was able to get the brood because they had stored them in an attached test tube to take advantage of the warmer conditions there.    Many ants will move their pupae or cocoons to a warmer place.   I've done something similar with outdoor colonies, specifically Tetramorium, where I put a piece of black cloth on one side of a known colony with an old cd case on top and left it for a couple of weeks.    On a sunny warm day, I removed the cloth and used a trowel to lift the soil and expose two chambers where I found pupae, that I removed.    I took out the trowel and firmed the soil back down almost as good as original.   I used the pupae to boost a young Tetramorium colony that was struggling.  I call them my XL colony because the workers are very large; I can easily tell the difference from the newly eclosed workers.  Those new workers have added a lot of work power to the colony, and I can see a noticeable increase in their consumption of protein - meaning more larvae.   I'm feeling a lot more optimistic about this colony now.

 

Another example is the brood boosting I did with two founding Lasius neoniger colonies late this summer.   L. neoniger nanitics and young workers, in my experience, tend to be shy and rather haphazard in their foraging and food gathering activities, they develop rather slowly, so I wanted to give them a boost.   I have a spot out back where there's a large piece of plywood on the ground beside the burn barrel.   A hot sunny place.  I was able to simply lift up the plywood on a sunny day and remove as many cocoons as I wanted from the Lasius ants living there.   I replaced the plywood and two weeks later I was able to do the same thing again.   I removed about fifty cocoons and split them between the two colonies.   The cocoons I collected, however, weren't L. neoniger but L. americanus and their workers are very different from neoniger.  Despite the difference, as long as they're Lasius, they're compatible.    L. americanus  workers are all business, from collecting food to feeding larvae.   The size difference alone is responsible for things like their ability to pull food like flies right into the nest for the larvae.   This is going to give each colony a real boost, and hopefully ensure their success.

 

I have two patio stones that lean up against the side of my garage on the sunny side.   I put a bit of soil in between them and ants use this place to warm their cocoons.   I just have to tip the top patio stone forward and the cocoons are easily obtained.   The trick is to set these "traps" up early in the season, so ants get used to them and use them for brood and you can take cocoons or pupae without undue damage to their environment.

 

I've seen the benefit that brood boosting has for struggling and founding colonies, but if you already have a strong, successful colony it may not be that necessary,

RPT

[Ants_Dakota]

Brood Boosting

 

Hello Evanmancini2011;

 

I understand the arguments for and against brood boosting, but my experiences might help you to decide what you want to do.   Although it is rewarding to watch a queen start a colony unadulterated, some ants like Camponotus are slow growing and their strength can certainly be aided by brood boosting.  Last season I was able to take cocoons from one of my older colonies and boost two of my second-year colonies to great advantage.    I was able to get the brood because they had stored them in an attached test tube to take advantage of the warmer conditions there.    Many ants will move their pupae or cocoons to a warmer place.   I've done something similar with outdoor colonies, specifically Tetramorium, where I put a piece of black cloth on one side of a known colony with an old cd case on top and left it for a couple of weeks.    On a sunny warm day, I removed the cloth and used a trowel to lift the soil and expose two chambers where I found pupae, that I removed.    I took out the trowel and firmed the soil back down almost as good as original.   I used the pupae to boost a young Tetramorium colony that was struggling.  I call them my XL colony because the workers are very large; I can easily tell the difference from the newly eclosed workers.  Those new workers have added a lot of work power to the colony, and I can see a noticeable increase in their consumption of protein - meaning more larvae.   I'm feeling a lot more optimistic about this colony now.

 

Another example is the brood boosting I did with two founding Lasius neoniger colonies late this summer.   L. neoniger nanitics and young workers, in my experience, tend to be shy and rather haphazard in their foraging and food gathering activities, they develop rather slowly, so I wanted to give them a boost.   I have a spot out back where there's a large piece of plywood on the ground beside the burn barrel.   A hot sunny place.  I was able to simply lift up the plywood on a sunny day and remove as many cocoons as I wanted from the Lasius ants living there.   I replaced the plywood and two weeks later I was able to do the same thing again.   I removed about fifty cocoons and split them between the two colonies.   The cocoons I collected, however, weren't L. neoniger but L. americanus and their workers are very different from neoniger.  Despite the difference, as long as they're Lasius, they're compatible.    L. americanus  workers are all business, from collecting food to feeding larvae.   The size difference alone is responsible for things like their ability to pull food like flies right into the nest for the larvae.   This is going to give each colony a real boost, and hopefully ensure their success.

 

I have two patio stones that lean up against the side of my garage on the sunny side.   I put a bit of soil in between them and ants use this place to warm their cocoons.   I just have to tip the top patio stone forward and the cocoons are easily obtained.   The trick is to set these "traps" up early in the season, so ants get used to them and use them for brood and you can take cocoons or pupae without undue damage to their environment.

 

I've seen the benefit that brood boosting has for struggling and founding colonies, but if you already have a strong, successful colony it may not be that necessary,

RPT

Stealing brood from wild colonies is something that is very easy to do, as you noted. Furthermore, it can provide benefits to colonies and push them a year so so faster to becoming a mature colony. And as you also mentioned, taking brood from a personal colony is one way of doing this, one which I do not critique. In fact, in my opinion, the best way to go about brood boosting is through contacting long time antkeepers with established colonies in your area to perhaps get you this brood. However, as established in a recent post about culling large colonies, skipping the founding state of a colony can push antkeepers into a moneypit they may not be prepared to climb out of. It is also important to remember queens can live up to 20 years. Very few members on this forum have kept a colony for even half of that. I think it is important to treat ants as we would any other pet, and plan ahead as to how to best treat the colony in order for it to have the best life. Pushing a colony too large too fast can make this difficult. In addition, skipping the shy slow growing stage is akin to the French children's fable "The Magic Thread," whose underlying message is that "only by learning to wait, and by a willingness to accept the bad with the good, do we usually obtain those things that are truly worthwhile." Whichever way evanmancini2011 choses to go is their choice, as it is the choice of any member reading this post, I just want to be an advocate for the protection of established ants in nature whenever possible.

Ants_Dakota

[RushmoreAnts]

I've done something similar with outdoor colonies, specifically Tetramorium, where I put a piece of black cloth on one side of a known colony with an old cd case on top and left it for a couple of weeks.    On a sunny warm day, I removed the cloth and used a trowel to lift the soil and expose two chambers where I found pupae, that I removed.    I took out the trowel and firmed the soil back down almost as good as original.   I used the pupae to boost a young Tetramorium colony that was struggling.  I call them my XL colony because the workers are very large; I can easily tell the difference from the newly eclosed workers.  Those new workers have added a lot of work power to the colony, and I can see a noticeable increase in their consumption of protein - meaning more larvae.   I'm feeling a lot more optimistic about this colony now.

While your method is valid and explanation comprehensible, I would contend that Tetamorium is one of the key species which should not be brood boosted, as it is just not worth the effort. A couple years ago I was impatient and brood boosted my Tetramorium immigrans queen. She gained ~100 workers in a week or so. Fast forward to this year. I caught more Tetramorium queens on July 4. As of now the largest colony has about 100 workers and more brood than I boosted the last one with, completely naturally grown. It's been about 9 weeks; not worth the effort of brood boosting, as boosting Camponotus could potentially bypass years of growth. Even the colony which I would consider struggling has around 30 workers, which is subpar to their sister colonies yet still impressive in general for an ant colony in 9 weeks.

[rptraut]

Collecting Wild Ants and Colonies

I want to thank everyone who's read my post and responded, healthy discussion is really needed in this area. I've never read a set of rules about what is acceptable etiquette when collecting ants or ant colonies. I guess every person has to make up their own mind what they think is right. I'll tell you why I collect ants the way I do. Among many other things I am first and foremost a naturalist. My working life was dedicated to soil conservation and educating about soil health which includes all the critters that live in soil but are quickly disappearing from our conventional field crop agricultural systems. In my post on brood boosting, I discussed three ways that brood can be collected with minimal damage to the environment of the ants. I don't really consider it stealing, I'm merely rehoming these brood to a better life that any wild ant would envy. I've also rescued Temnothorax and Myrmica colonies from a nearby woodlot and a cottage lot that were to be clearcut for development. Of course I collected them with permission. I recently wrote about a Tapinoma colony that I lured into an empty formicarium because it was a nice place to live. I've never dug up an ant colony and I think I've shown it isn't necessary. I've purchased many queens and founding colonies that I'm lucky I could afford. When I started keeping ants during Covid lockdown, I soon realized that many of the colonies I was starting had the potential to outlive me, and that eventually I'd have to give them away or destroy them. But until then, I'm enjoying them and living my childhood dream. I intend to keep ants when I'm in the nursing home.

But I am disturbed when I hear or read about someone digging up a colony looking for queens and ants and brood. When I was young, I did a lot of things I now regret. We often went down to the creek to shoot frogs or out back to shoot groundhogs. We used the frogs for bait and once in a while a cow would break a leg stepping in a groundhog hole, so that was reason enough to shoot them. Now frogs are dwindling worldwide, groundhogs are too, and I never thought it would ever be possible - how could we ever overfish cod? These things never crossed our minds at the time. So, I just say take care, think about the long-term ramifications of what you are doing and the fact that you have no idea what can happen just like we didn't. It's up to each and every one of us to stop the rape and pillage of the natural world that will lead to our ultimate demise. Ant keepers, better than anyone know what happens when you take a population of fruit flies in a confined space. The population increases until they overwhelm their resources, and they all die. Nature recycles our waste, recycles our air, cleans our water, and produces our food. We are dependent on nature to do all these things and yet we continue to destroy it. Saving nature begins with each individual and the most important one to start with is you.
RPT

Edited by rptraut, September 5 2024 - 3:36 PM.

[Ants_Dakota]

Collecting Wild Ants and Colonies

 

I want to thank everyone who's read my post and responded, healthy discussion is really needed in this area.   I've never read a set of rules about what is acceptable etiquette when collecting ants or ant colonies.   I guess every person has to make up their own mind what they think is right.   I'll tell you why I collect ants the way I do.   Among many other things I am first and foremost a naturalist.    My working life was dedicated to soil conservation and educating about soil health which includes all the critters that live in soil but are quickly disappearing from our conventional field crop agricultural systems.   In my post on brood boosting, I discussed three ways that brood can be collected with minimal damage to the environment of the ants.   I don't really consider it stealing, I'm merely rehoming these brood to a better life that any wild ant would envy.   I've also rescued Temnothorax and Myrmica colonies from a nearby woodlot and a cottage lot that were to be clearcut for development.   Of course I collected them with permission.   I recently wrote about a Tapinoma colony that I lured into an empty formicarium because it was a nice place to live.   I've never dug up an ant colony and I think I've shown it isn't necessary.   I've purchased many queens and founding colonies that I'm lucky I could afford.   When I started keeping ants during Covid lockdown, I soon realized that many of the colonies I was starting had the potential to outlive me, and that eventually I'd have to give them away or destroy them.   But until then, I'm enjoying them and living my childhood dream.   I intend to keep ants when I'm in the nursing home.   

 

But I am disturbed when I hear or read about someone digging up a colony looking for queens and ants and brood.   When I was young, I did a lot of things I now regret.    We often went down to the creek to shoot frogs or out back to shoot groundhogs.    We used the frogs for bait and once in a while a cow would break a leg stepping in a groundhog hole, so that was reason enough to shoot them.    Now frogs are dwindling worldwide, groundhogs are too, and I never thought it would ever be possible - how could we ever overfish cod?    These things never crossed our minds at the time.   So, I just say take care, think about the long-term ramifications of what you are doing and the fact that you have no idea what can happen just like we didn't.   It's up to each and every one of us to stop the rape and pillage of the natural world that will lead to our ultimate demise.   Ant keepers, better than anyone know what happens when you take a population of fruit flies in a confined space.   The population increases until they overwhelm their resources, and they all die.    Nature recycles our waste, recycles our air, cleans our water, and produces our food.   We are dependent on nature to do all these things and yet we continue to destroy it.    Saving it begins with each individual and the most important one to start with is you.  

RPT

I could not have said it better. 

[rptraut]

Thanks for all your comments. We’re all in the same boat, it’s the actions of each one of us that’ll determine whether we sink or float.
RPT

[AntsGodzilla]

lol I just use heat for my Pogonomyrmex rugosus

[ANTdrew]

lol I just use heat for my Pogonomyrmex rugosus

Please stop with posts like this. Take more time to read and learn before posting things that don’t add to a discussion or the overall quality of the forum.

[rptraut]

The Boosted XLTetramorium Colony

 

I'll explain the reason why I boosted the XLTetramorium colony and they're another good example of how I've acquired a colony without digging.   As was pointed out by RushmoreAnts, boosting a Tetramorium colony is seldom required and in most cases isn't even necessary.    I found these ants living in a flowerpot in my workshop, they were using the drainage hole to come and go, and they'd moved in from a crack in the windowsill.    One of the things that impressed me most about these ants was their size.   You can see their identification and a size comparison that I posted in the ID thread here Ant ID Please - Ant ID Requests - Ants & Myrmecology Forum (formiculture.com)   

 

 

 

 I was anxious to get this colony going because of their extra-large size, but they didn't seem to increase very quickly last season, and they've developed very slowly this season as well.   They've been taking protein both seasons, so I assume they're raising brood, albeit very slowly.    Perhaps this is one of those queens that just doesn't have the egg laying capability of other queens.   There is always variability.   Now that summer's winding down, I realized that if I was going to give them some additional brood before diapause, I'd better do it soon.   I explained how I collected them in the post above.

 

The newly eclosed workers have certainly stepped up the pace of the colony.   Many more ants collect protein and sugar/water, and a major cleanup is presently underway.  The diy formicarium they're housed in is a favourite of mine, it's different from the others I've made, and I want an active colony in it.   

 

 

Although I agree that Tetramorium colonies seldom, if ever, require boosting, this struggling colony has certainly seen an increase in activity and hopefully, brood production.   I think it's been worthwhile.

RPT

Edited by rptraut, September 9 2024 - 10:57 PM.

[mbullock42086]

easiest is when they just flat-out bring a mountain of callows to the surface to incubate at night, great food source for other ants that need lots of protein

[rptraut]

Hell mbullock42086;

 

I'm not sure where you live, but here in Canada, ants transport their brood (callows) deeper into the nest at night from the places where they've kept them warm near the surface during the sunny, warm part of the day.   The best places to find cocoons or pupae are where something like a rock, board, or anything else (like a patio stone) is heated more than the surrounding area during the day, by the sun.    

 

Also, feeding collected brood to other ants isn't really brood boosting and may generate a whole different level of discussion that might be better addressed in a separate thread.

RPT