132 replies to this topic

[Foogoo]

Did these queens take a while to settle down when you first caught them? All of the nearly 30 I caught yesterday have been relentlessly tugging at the cotton for 24 hrs straight. I tried putting a few in makeshift dirt nests and they're equally restless. None look anywhere close to taking care of kids...

[dspdrew]

You got the concolorous coastal ones right? They should calm down after a few days.

[Foogoo]

You got the concolorous coastal ones right? They should calm down after a few days.

Ah yes, not bicolor, my mistake. Though I'm assuming their behavior should be similar.

[dspdrew]

Update 5-31-2015
 
Just the other day they started digging a nest in the ant farm. Today they started moving in. It looks like they have moved the majority of their brood into the new nest already.
 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ants4fun]

Awesome! Sooooooo jealous!!!

[dspdrew]

Update 10-5-2015
 
The large colony is still doing well in its big ant farm. They've dug tons of tunnels by now, and have probably reached close to 1000 in population. quite a few older smaller workers have died off and are now being replaced by really big workers that are about the size of the queen.
 

 

 
 
They are on a regular schedule where they all go inside the nest in the evening, and all come out early in the morning.
 
Here's a picture of what the nest looks like at night. As you can see, there are hardly any workers out at all. In the morning the surface will be completely covered with foraging ants.
 

 
 
A few times they piled the dirt up so high on the edges that I had to remove it. This is what it looked like the other day before I vacuumed the loose dirt up.
 

 
 
The nest finally started getting too dry and it was time for some hydration. I bonded some vinyl tubing together to make a little tank, and I stuck it in the bottom hole on the side of the ant farm.
 

 

 

 

 

 
 
The water poured in a little faster than I expected, and the dirt was so hard that it look much longer for the water to soak in than I expected too. A few workers drowned because of this, and I sure hope the queen was nowhere near the very bottom, or she could have drowned. I did see them pull a few dead workers out once things started drying up, and I didn't see the queen anywhere, so I may be alright. There's a heavily populated area more towards the middle of the nest with lots of brood, and I think that's probably close to where she hangs out.
 
Here's what it looks like when they come out to forage.
 

 

 

 

 
 
A couple times I came home from work to find 20 or so workers crawling around on the carpet next to the ant farm. Most just stayed close to a little pile of seeds and trash they had collected, and only a few wandered a few feet away. It took me a while to figure out exactly how they were escaping, but it turns out they were climbing up the glass. As the glass gets dirty, they can sometimes get enough grip to make it all the way up. What made this difficult to figure out, is even though they were all out of the nest walking around on the surface, there's only certain times when they would crawl out of the ant farm. They all crawled out during that exact window of time, and the rest of the day, not a single one even tried. I'm thinking it might just be the time when they want to go out foraging as opposed to just hanging around the nest doing maintenance.
 
The smaller colony is still living in the large dirt box. They now have hardly any brood left, and I don't see any young brood, so I'm a little worried the queen may have died or stopped producing.

[dspdrew]

Update 10-16-2015
 
I poured the smaller colony out of the dirt box to see if the queen is still alive, and it turns out she is. They look to have around 600 workers now, and I also found some young brood, including a little cluster of eggs. I guess she's probably just slowing down production during this time of the year.
 
I now have this colony in a foraging container with five test tubes. I just don't need both colonies, so I'm going to sell this one.
 

 

 

[dspdrew]

Testing out my feeder.
 

 

 
 
Look how much that one drank!
 

[Gregory2455]

Drunk ants.

[antmaniac]

The one drank a lot looks like a wasp.

[Foogoo]

How is that hydration system working for the large dirt farm? And do you have any details/pictures on how the magnets are being used to hold the glass? That's a really neat nest, might be my next project.

[dspdrew]

The hydration is nothing more than just a tube leading to the bottom of the nest. I've flooded it pretty bad on accident a few times. You can't pour too much water in at a time. As for the magnets, those are just to hold the black foam board covers on to the glass. The magnets are embedded in the foam board.

[Kingjay]

I was thinking of make a home for ants out of a tackle box.Like cutting holes in the sides so the can travel and get food I'm doing it right now I'll make a article and shoe pictures of the new project

[Foogoo]

I'm going to try making a few dirt nests and yours looks the least complicated. Is there anything you'd do differently?

[dspdrew]

Hmmmmmm. I would come up with a better solution for adding water. It sucks taking the lid off to add water. The problem is, a better solution doesn't seem to be coming easy. I did have some ideas a while back, but I've been focusing on other projects.

[Foogoo]

Why do you have to take the lid off? I thought you're filling it via the tubes that go to the bottom of the nest?

[dspdrew]

Oh I thought you were talking about my founding dirt nests. Didn't realize which thread this was posted on. Well if I made the entire thing myself, which I didn't, I would have made it a bit thinner. I would also build it with a little better hydration system.

[sgheaton]

Can you comment on how this nest is doing, Drew?

 

Edit:

If I happen to get a Pogonomyrmex queen - I think I'll recreate this set up before the fish tank design as its more true to Uncle Miltons Ant Farm window pane design that I'm after.

Edited by sgheaton, July 19 2016 - 11:27 AM.

[EstuaryAnts]

Update???

[dspdrew]

Update 7-19-2016

The colony is still doing fine. I haven't seen any changes in the colony or their nest at all.