6 replies to this topic

[chickenman297]

Hi everyone,

 

About me: Born in Darwin and lived there for 38 years. Now living near Brisbane. In Darwin, ants are everywhere and have always interested me. I remember the 4 colonies of ants in our backyard when I was a kid included the Australian meat ant, fire ants (which we called ginger ants), weaver ants and the little black tetramoriums. I can also remember while growing up, catching quite a few weaver ant queens, but lacked the knowledge on how to raise them in captivity (oh well). I recently moved near Brisbane and have found quite a few species of ants living here. I have applied to get on the forums at Ants Canada, but I am sick of waiting for their admins to approve my account so have posted here instead. More power to this forum

 

After reviewing the Ants Canada guides on caring for ants, I have set out to find some queens and today I have managed to catch 2. My next post will be in the Queen ID request forum. See ya all there.

 

Regards

[Del]

Hi man, welcome. Things seem to be warming up here, lots of queens to be caught 

-edit- also you should join the Australian ant keepers facebook page. It's pretty active and there is lots of local species knowledge 

Edited by Del, October 11 2016 - 3:01 AM.

[chickenman297]

Hiya Del. Yep, definitely warming up here. I have successfully captured 3 queens so far though the ID on this forum for them seems to be mixed. One of the joys of living in Australia I guess lol (no offense to the people trying to help, that is much appreciated). I have found 2 other confirmed queens so far apart from the 3 I have caught. 1 was in Toowoomba, unfortunately I didn't have anything to put her in so I had to let her go which is a pity because she was a very unusual queen. She had a head shaped similar to a typical major (soldier) and a relatively small gaster. Definitely a queen because she had her wings and her eyes were small compared to her head. The second one was right outside my house. I had it in the test tube, but my un-co finger had trapped her leg against the glass so she couldn't climb up into the tube. I tried to release her leg but ended up with her floating down into the grass never to be seen again.

 

I have caught another 2 what I suspect are queens but they are very small (around 5 mm). I suspect they are queens because they don't look like any of the ants I commonly see. I have them in a test tube setup and will wait a few days to see if they start broods.

 

I'm not on facebook unfortunately.

[Del]

I'm kind of jealous that you guys in the North have so much queen activity already, they have only just started here in Sydney. I guess this is what people in Melbourne must be feeling haha

[chickenman297]

It's started raining. That usually means more queens a flying

 

I'm jealous of the Darwinites. Their queens will be flying thick by now. I can remember driving soon after storms through thick clouds of ant queens. They literally appear by the hundreds. Oh to be living up there again.

[Trailandstreet]

Hi

[chickenman297]

Hi

o/