38 replies to this topic

[dspdrew]

Update 1-30-2016
 
Another one of these colonies was found dead today, leaving only one remaining colony.

[dspdrew]

Update 3-31-2016

The last colony died. Hopefully I'll get a much better queen this season.

[dspdrew]

Update 6-6-2016

I found a bunch more of these on 6-2-2016 in Trabuco Canyon, CA. When I first pulled up around 8:00 pm, they started swarming in the thousands, coating my whole windshield. Thirty minutes later, the flight was over and they were nowhere to be seen, other than a few randoms that showed up on the black light after it got dark.

 

I set up four test tubes, and put different numbers of them in each one.

[Vendayn]

Temnothorax.

Hope they are successful. They are a cool little ant species.

[Goldsystem]

Good luck

[dspdrew]

Update 6-28-2016

All but one of these new queens have died already. The one I have left has a few eggs.
 
While up near Crystal Lake in Azusa, California about a week ago, I came across a whole colony of these under a rock. They had tons of alate brood, but no alates yet. I sucked up as much of the colony as I could, and then removed all of the alate brood when I got home. I put them into one of my new founding formicariums.
 

 

[Gregory2455]

Update 6-28-2016

All but one of these new queens have died already. The one I have left has a few eggs.
 
While up near Crystal Lake in Azusa, California about a week ago, I came across a whole colony of these under a rock. They had tons of alate brood, but no alates yet. I sucked up as much of the colony as I could, and then removed all of the alate brood when I got home. I put them into one of my new founding formicariums.
 

 

Looks awesome.

[dspdrew]

Update 7-28-2016

Most of this mature colony died off, but now seems to be stable. There are only a few workers, but the queen has started to lay some eggs again, so hopefully the colony will start growing back.

[dspdrew]

Update 8-22-2016

This colony just got smaller and smaller, and now the few that were left are dead.

[Vendayn]

Well I know I said it before. But, I read up that Temnothorax prefer colder temperatures, and die off when its too hot. It could be that your place gets too warm for them.

[dspdrew]

Well this last colony came from way up in the mountains, so they were definitely used to cooler temps.

[dspdrew]

Update 6-4-2018

I found four more of these queens this year in Trabuco Canyon 6-3-2018.

[dspdrew]

Update 7-28-2018

I actually found a bunch more of these queens, and now have about 13 colonies, some with more than one queen.
 
One of them got their first worker the other day.
 

[dspdrew]

Update 12-7-2018

I now have seven of these colonies left. They all have workers and are producing brood. I just moved the remaining four that were in test tubes into formicariums. Right now the largest colony has six workers and plenty of brood.

[FSTP]

What are you feeding these guys? Just your standard crickets and sugars?

[dspdrew]

What are you feeding these guys? Just your standard crickets and sugars?

 

Yes.

[dspdrew]

Update 6-14-2019

I now have three of these colonies left from last year, and just found a bunch more queens in Trabuco Canyon on 6-9-2019.

[dspdrew]

Update 11-9-2019

I have one colony left from last year, and it's doing really well. As you can see from the picture below, it has even started producing a bunch of male alates. I counted about 200 workers.

 

 

 

 

 

I also still have a few new colonies from the season that just passed. They all have just a few workers, but they have a bit of brood too, so they are growing.

[M_Ants]

Caught some queens recently. Any advice on keeping these?