7 replies to this topic

[Vendayn]

Today (10-05-15), the substrate was just wet enough to make digging easy. It rained this morning a bit, so was a good time to get a colony as any. I managed to get 3+ queens (going to try getting more later as three isn't very much, but gotta wait for all the highschool kids finish leaving school) and a bunch of workers, brood and male alates. The males will probably just die off, but they are so tiny in this species I can't sort them out. They are like tiny little gnats.

 

I always have success with Forelius, so I won't have any issues with this colony at all. Especially if I can get more queens. This species is the easiest species I've kept, in California. Easy to keep, very active, fun to watch and very easy to feed. My favorite ant farm species around here.

 

Also, they are probably Forelius mccooki. F. mccooki tend to nest more in dirt, where as F. pruinosus nests mostly in sand, but, not always. Both look too similar to tell the difference between the two by looking at them. In any case, they both have the same exact diet, behavior and everything, so its not a big deal.

Edited by Vendayn, September 17 2016 - 9:04 PM.

[Vendayn]

The colony now resides at 15+ queens. I did get a lot, but I left almost all the queens for the wild colony. This species is one that has lots and lots of queens for each colony. I've seen some with easily over a hundred queens. And their colonies are huge.

 

They also produce alates AND mate in captivity. I had one colony when I was still newer at ant farm keeping (many years ago), that mated and budded out in captivity. They had queens in three different containers. At the time, my parents thought they'd fly everywhere (and I was young too) so I had to release them. I could have just covered them, but I thought the queens would chew through plastic...hey I was a kid. I did have a colony a few years ago that produced alates in captivity again, but I was moving so I couldn't keep them. They'd probably have budded out too.

 

They bud out in the wild too. Out near Palm Springs, and again in Del Mar before they did construction to the area...the queens would just take some workers and move to a new location. I've never personally seen them actually fly, but maybe I just never saw them. I always just notice them mating inside their nests (I dug a bit into a few nests and they were actually mating inside) and budding out like Argentine ants. I guess people have actually seen them fly, but I personally haven't seen that. They probably do, as I see colonies scattered around, so they may do both.

 

I know one colony out by Palm Springs has easily over a million ants, it is really huge and has been there for many years (over 10 now).

Edited by Vendayn, October 5 2015 - 6:03 PM.

[Vendayn]

A huge thick trail of Argentine ants were trying to invade the Forelius ants. Luckily, only some Forelius workers died. There are thousands of dead Argentine ants though. They chewed through the paper lid and tried invading. The Argentine ants lost.

[Mdrogun]

Do you have any pictures?

[Vendayn]

Not of the battle, no. My phone isn't good enough to take pictures of small ants like Forelius and Argentine ants. You'd just see a blurry mess. It barely took pictures of the Veromessor queen and she was much larger than these ones.

[Vendayn]

On the other hand...I got WAY too many Forelius workers. When I was getting them, I literally only did 4 scoops of dirt with my small garden shovel. I left almost everything still at their nest.

 

 

And wow. I got way too many.

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I easily have over 50,000 workers. I probably instead got 100,000+ or so. I never got that many with only a few scoops. I'm going to have to connect more ant farms up as they are way too crowded in their LARGE container.

 

If I got that many, left nearly all the rest at the nest. I can't even imagine how big that colony is! And I probably got way more than 15 queens, since most were probably also in the soil. I definitely didn't even get a fraction of the colony, and I never wanted that many lol...

 

By the way, as a side note. I'm back home and get to sleep in my own bed again!

Edited by Vendayn, October 6 2015 - 5:50 PM.

[Vendayn]

Not much to update on. But, they already have new egg piles and the larvae and pupae from when I got them. It looks like there are probably around 100 new eggs that have been laid already, and they are eating a lot of pork and honey. I need to expand them at some point, because there are so many. And, I definitely got a lot of queens! I probably got a lot more than I think, but they can be hard to see since they are kind of small and their coloring makes it hard to see against the dirt (just a bit smaller than Argentine ants).

[Vendayn]

This colony is long gone. I'd like to get one again though. But, the colony got knocked over some time back and they escaped. They didn't survive outside either.