173 replies to this topic

[dspdrew]

3-31-2014
 
On March 31st 2014, I found six Veromessor pergandei dealates digging their founding chambers along the side of a dirt road in Phelan, California. jimbodw07 lives very close to this area, and was the one who first discovered the founding chambers, but says he never witnessed any nuptial flights. The dealates all over this area had been out every night for the past couple weeks digging founding chambers while temperatures were in the high 40's to low 50's.
 

 
 
Since they supposedly can be polygyne, I placed two of the dealates together in one test tube, while all the rest are alone. The two dealates put together showed no aggression toward each other. All six dealates started laying eggs the night I found them.

[jimbodw07]

Excellent journal. I will be following this.

[dspdrew]

Update 4-21-2014
 
A few days ago, some of these started to get some larvae. Now there are about three of them with some fairly large larvae.
 

 

 

[Matt]

Beautiful! Theses queens have a real beard!

I wish you lots of luck with them.

[dspdrew]

Harvester ants and their beards.

[dspdrew]

Update 5-10-2014
 
The colony with two queens had one worker eclose yesterday morning, and at the same time I found one of the queens dead. I'm not sure if the dead queen was killed by the other queen when that worker eclosed, or if it just died coincidentally the same day. Today there are seven workers in that colony, and one or two in a couple of the other colonies. The two queens I thought might not be fertile because their eggs didn't seem to be developing now have larvae.
 

 

 

[jimbodw07]

Pretty impressive! I'm still waiting for my queens to produce workers.

 

Question: Are you using a heating source for these queens?

[dspdrew]

Nope, my apartment is over 90 degrees when it's this hot out. I have no AC and I have servers running in here on top of that.

[dspdrew]

Update 5-22-2014
 
I just sold one colony today, leaving me with four.

 

Here's a little video of all five.

 

[jimbodw07]

Lucky lucky man. I'm still waiting for my workers. You've got some ant skills that I don't have lol.

[dspdrew]

Haha nah, I just have an apartment that feels like the dinosaur ride at Knott's.

[dspdrew]

Update 5-29-2014
 
Another one of these colonies just died off completely, including the queen. I also sold one more, leaving me with only two colonies now.

[dspdrew]

Update 6-30-2014
 
One of my remaining two colonies just had their queen die a few days ago. I moved all of their brood and what looks like two new nanitic majors into the test tube of the remaining healthy colony. At first the two majors were putting up a little bit of a fight as the workers were steeling their brood, but after a while, they started getting along just fine, helping with the cleaning and organizing. I moved this colony's test tube into a foraging container, and dropped a bunch of grass seed into it. They seem to really like this seed, and have collected every single one of them, piling them all in their test tube. I'm introducing two workers from the doomed colony to this colony each day, and so far they fight a little bit for a little while, and then eventually start getting a long. Hopefully I can eventually have both colonies joined together completely.
 
Grass seed I found that they seem to like. It's an Anthoxanthum sp., possibly Anthoxanthum occidentale.
 

 

[Gregory2455]

Went to the Phelan area today, saw no ants as it was about 110 all day. Nice colony.

Edited by Gregory2455, November 8 2014 - 12:02 PM.

[Gregory2455]

Any update? Ha, Pretty sure that is my first post on this forum.   ^

[dspdrew]

I am planning to update with pictures in a day or two. They are doing well though.

[dspdrew]

Update 8-13-2014
 
My one colony is doing great. It looks like it's up to over a hundred workers now. Not much else has happened since the last update; the queen has just been producing like crazy.
 

 

 

 

[Gregory2455]

I wonder... are these polymorphic?

[dspdrew]

Highly polymorphic.

[Gregory2455]

That sounds fun, cannot wait to get my hands on a queen next spring.