174 replies to this topic

[Gregory2455]

Update: 9/25/2014

The queen of the larger colony died today. I humanly disposed of the workers and gave all her brood to my smallest colony, which is now in a glass test tube. This was my third fertile queen to die this year, which is not so bad considering I have around 50 different colonies/queens.

[DesertAntz]

Wouldn't everything just about anything be a humane death for ants? Anything we can do to them is likely to be quite a quick death. 

 

But I guess bug spray would be pretty messed up. I almost feel bad about the scorpions I spray. Almost. 

Edited by DesertAntz, September 25 2014 - 8:27 PM.

[Gregory2455]

SCORPIONS!? WHY!!! POOR SCORPIONS! I will buy them all off you. Alive please.

[DesertAntz]

 

 

No scorpions in my house!   

[Gregory2455]

Get one of those grabbers, glue cotton balls onto the pads, and grab them and throw them out!

[Gregory2455]

Update: 10/3/2014

So all of these colonies are going good.

 

The queen that got the boost brood from the dead colony is now up to ten workers, and she started to lay eggs.

 

The other two colonies are now both past 35 workers, and I have needed to put them into outworlds already because test tube feeding became too much of  a challenge. I have seen three castes already.

-Nanitic Minor

-Nanitic Medium OR Normal Minor

-Nanitic Major     OR Normal Medium

 

The only reason I think these are majors already, is because there is already a caste between them and the minors, which there are about six of, but these two guys are about 2mm larger, and have more broad bodies, resembling the fully grown majors I have seen before.

 

Here is a picture of the boosted queen's growing colony.

 

Here are images of the colony with two of these larger sized workers.

You can see one of those "majors" in the area they keep the fruit flies, and one standing sideways right in front of the brood.

Edited by Gregory2455, October 28 2014 - 9:48 PM.

[DesertAntz]

Yeah that one in the middle of the flies definitely looks like a major, from afar at least. 

 

The 3 queens, of these gals, I got this year have perished, sadly. This species is one of my favorites. 

[Gregory2455]

That sucks DesertAntz...

 

Yeah, another thing is that these guys are great hunters. I put in 5 fruit flies that are supposed to last them a while, and they hunt them all down in an hour.

[Gregory2455]

[Gregory2455]

[Gregory2455]

[Tpro4]

How many xyloni's do you have?

[Gregory2455]

Three colonies.

[Gregory2455]

Video Update: 10/18/2014

My two largest colonies:

 

My smaller colony is still doing good too.

[DesertAntz]

Beautiful colony. 

 

Do you throw in your fruit flies alive or dead? 

[Gregory2455]

Chilled, so they are slow. It makes it easier to catch them, because the out world area compared to the colony size is still rather large, so it would be hard to throw them in completely alert, because they would disperse.

[Alza]

very well, grey. it seems Byakurai is doing good.

[Gregory2455]

Quit it with the naming, seriously.

[Gregory2455]

Also, I will be "testing" with the infertile queen of this species I caught. I will be boosting her regularly with brood from my large colonies, mainly just out of a bunch of curiosities I have. 

[Tpro4]

Do these gals need to hibernate, because at my place, the weather has been pretty cold, and I stopped seeing them come out of the small ant hole that they have. I have no fear of them dieting out, because I feed them every three days a freshly killed bee, and some sugar water every two days.