67 replies to this topic

[dspdrew]

Update 11-20-2016

Everything died in this colony except the queen and one worker. I just put them into hibernation.

[Leo]

too bad

[dspdrew]

Update 3-16-2017

I just took this colony out of hibernation. The queen and her worker both look to be just fine.

 

I also just found a bunch more of these queens 3-10-2017 and 3-11-2017, up at Chaney Trail in Altadena, CA.

[dspdrew]

Update 4-28-2017

I just found a bunch more of these queens April 21 and 22 in Mount Baldy.

[dspdrew]

Update 7-9-2017

I have still have a lot of these new colonies. I'm hoping I can get a good sized colony out of one of them this time around.

 

Something interesting that happened while I was doing some colony maintenance... I found a small two-worker colony with their queen laying dead so I decided to give their brood to another colony. Not knowing what to do with the two left over workers, I just figured I would dump them in too and see if they'd get along. I've had it work before after they were aggressive with each other for a while. Well, I dumped them in and amazingly there was no aggression at all. One of them even went right up and started feeding the queen.

[dspdrew]

Update 1-13-2018

I haven't lost very many of these colonies, but the colonies have lost a lot of workers. I moved them out of the warm room they were in, and into the air conditioned area of my apartment, but so far I haven't seen any improvements. I just now put them all into hibernation for the winter.

[nurbs]

Wonder if it's just the heat. All mine are thriving, no loss in workers.

[dspdrew]

Update 6-8-2018

I just took these out of hibernation about a week ago. All the colonies are still very small.

[dspdrew]

Update 7-28-2018

I found more of these queens this year, but sold most of the colonies because they never do well for me. Right now I only have two colonies with around six or so workers each.
 
While out collecting queens in Hot Spring Canyon, we found a trail of the massive unidentified Camponotus (Edit: I now think this is Camponotus SP02 as shown on AntWeb) I've been after for years moving their nest. We all grabbed a few cocoons of what was obviously either female alates or the giant majors (Zeiss opened one up and found out they are actually majors). I decided to give one to each of my C. sansabeanus colonies since they're the same subgenus. So far they both seem to have accepted them as part of their colony. It will be interesting to see what happens when these things eclose.
 

 

Edited by dspdrew, June 20 2020 - 12:46 AM.

[TennesseeAnts]

Wow.... Those majors are as large as the queen! This should prove interesting.

[nurbs]

Maybe you should just use test tube setups for these. All mine from this season are in standard test tube setups and have well over 10 workers. Have a few with poly two and three queens as well. They seem to get along so far.

[dspdrew]

Maybe you should just use test tube setups for these. All mine from this season are in standard test tube setups and have well over 10 workers. Have a few with poly two and three queens as well. They seem to get along so far.

 

It's too much trouble taking care of ants when they are in test tubes.

[TennesseeAnts]

Maybe you should just use test tube setups for these. All mine from this season are in standard test tube setups and have well over 10 workers. Have a few with poly two and three queens as well. They seem to get along so far.

 
It's too much trouble taking care of ants when they are in test tubes.

I agree. It is difficult to feed them without workers getting out.

[nurbs]

 

 

Maybe you should just use test tube setups for these. All mine from this season are in standard test tube setups and have well over 10 workers. Have a few with poly two and three queens as well. They seem to get along so far.

 
It's too much trouble taking care of ants when they are in test tubes.

I agree. It is difficult to feed them without workers getting out.

 

 

 

Once they get workers, put the test tube in an outworld with a hydrostone base. Have hundreds of colonies like this. Works great.

 

 

 

[TennesseeAnts]

Thanks!

Edited by Ant_Dude2908, July 29 2018 - 1:54 PM.

[dspdrew]

Update 8-5-2018

As always these are all doing pretty poorly for me. I have two colonies, one with 8 workers, and the other with 6 plus their new gigantic adopted sister.
 
Well, one of the Camponotus us-ca02 major cocoons eclosed, and now the colony has a new member about 10 times the size of the other workers.
 

 

 
 
This is them eclosing the major. Because of its size, there were a few times they were almost hurt by it when it started getting agitated.
 

 
 
Here they are dragging it back into the nest.
 

[nurbs]

That's crazy how they accepted them. I gave some pupae to last year's salsas and they destroyed it. 

 

Check out this season's polygynous two queen C. sansabeanus from the same night we caught them at Chaney. Dunno why your camps never do well. Maybe you should go back to test tubes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Kaelwizard]

They seem similar to C. vicinus.

[dspdrew]

Update 5-10-2020

Well I finally have an update, but not with any spectacular pictures. As horribly as these have always done for me in the past, I finally seem to be doing ok with them now. I had a fairly large colony that I got from nurbs in a trade, but it ended up getting grain mites which I hate with a passion, so I ended up neglecting it and a lot of the workers died. I know he will have something funny to say about that, but it's ok because he completely killed the Acromyrmex colony I traded him for it. Currently that colony has about 20 workers with a few big majors. The mites eventually just died off, like they did in a few other colonies of mine.

 

Now to the part that's going well for me. I kept three colonies from last season, and right now the worker counts are 30, 35, and 80, so I'm pretty happy about that. The colony with 80 is the largest Camponotus Tanaemyrmex colony I have ever raised.

 

Here's all three of them.

 

 

 

This is the colony with 35 workers.

 

 

 

Here's the colony with 80 workers, even though it doesn't exactly look like it in the pictures. I counted multiple times.

 

 

 

 

[FSTP]

nice to see you updating