41 replies to this topic

[Gregory2455]

Ever since I got my one, lone Forelius pruinosus queen from http://forum.formicu...anting-7092014/, she has slowly been building up the amount of brood she has. It is crazy, that without eating once since they flew from their parent colony, that they can make a pile of larvae and pupae about three times larger than their mass. It does show though, she has shrunk raising all these, and it finally paid off for her yesterday, when her first worker eclosed! 

Followed by that, a second one came today and I decided to feed them. I put a drop of sugar water into the bottom of the test tube, and the second the first worker found it, drank up, and immediately rushed back (The test tube is actually a pretty large place for them) to the queen, and gave her some. After that, all three rushed down to the other side of the test tube as if they were crazed, and filled up. I did not really care much for this species at fist but after reading about them, I figure it will be fun to keep. My only problem is their size though. They are tiny. Probably smaller than Solenopsis molesta.

Edited by Gregory2455, February 20 2019 - 10:27 PM.

[Gregory2455]

I am very unfamiliar with this species, is there anything they like to eat specifically?

[dspdrew]

I really don't know. I had some for a while once.

 

I have often wondered how a queen can produce so much more brood than her own body mass, but it's probably because of the fact that the majority of the brood's weight is likely water, and there is plenty water for the queen to drink.

[Gregory2455]

Fruitflies and 50-50 sugar water seem to work, but the nanatics cannot kill the fruitfly themselves so it needs to be dead already.

[Gregory2455]

Update: 9/7/2014

Two nanatics drowned, leaving about two more. These guys seem to love to throw themselves into their liquid food. At least the queen is well fed, and laying eggs at full efficiency.

[Gregory2455]

These guys are back up to three workers and a large pile of pupae.

[Gregory2455]

Update: 9/22/2014

They have four workers now, I see a callow today, so they are making a slow and steady recovery, there are a LOT of larvae, but for some weird reason things are going slow, mainly because they aren't eating, even though they finally took a cricket leg a few days ago, and a little sugar water, that should speed things up.

[Gregory2455]

Update: 10/3/2014

This colony is now up to ten workers. I changed the way I feed liquids, as you may see in some of my other journals pictures, to avoid more drownings. It is basically just the tip of a q-tip.

[Gregory2455]

My new macro lens arrived today! These are my smallest ants, so of course these were the ones I tried it out on.

 

[dspdrew]

Those pictures look nice.

[Gregory2455]

Yeah, I will be putting more pictures on today.

[Gregory2455]

[Gregory2455]

[Gregory2455]

[James C. Trager]

The workers should grow up a bit larger as the colony grows. These are charming little ants, very speedy though, even more than Nylanderia.

[Gregory2455]

These are charming little ants, very speedy though, even more than Nylanderia.

Thank you, and yes, these guys are pretty fast.

[Gregory2455]

Update: 10/21/2014

The colony is now over 15 workers.

Still however the growth is pretty slow. I guess these colonies really need multiple queens to speed it up.

Edited by Gregory2455, October 21 2014 - 8:21 PM.

[AntsAreUs]

Wow, that queen really organized her brood...

[Gregory2455]

My Nylanderia vividula had their brood even better.

[Gregory2455]

Update: 10/28/2014

The colony is still doing good, growing pretty slow in population still, but they are still growing.

I apologize for the quality of these pictures, the lighting was pretty bad today.

 

Here is the colony with about half of the workers- the other half were foraging around the far end of the test tube.