I knew there was something seedy about that ant farm, and now I know I was right!
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I knew there was something seedy about that ant farm, and now I know I was right!
Looks like you need to mow!
haha love these comments.
update?
Update 12-14-2017
I'm now moving a colony of Pogonomyrmex maricopa into the giant ant farm. I'm pretty sure the P. tenuispinus queen that was in there is dead. I still have a couple queens alive in a few of the small Dirt Boxes, but I don't see any brood though.
Update 2-16-2018
The last of the remaining queens finally died.
Hooray! My favorite set up!! I'm most excited to watch this one develop
"I'm the search bar! Type questions into me and I'll search within the forums for an answer!"
:>
Update 8-4-2021
The remaining colony I had in one of the giant ant farms, just seemed to get smaller and smaller, until I rarely saw an ant anywhere. It's pretty safe to say they're all gone now.
My friend did catch a few new queens this season and he will be giving me some.
Update 12-14-2021
I never ended up picking any of these queens up this year. Right at the time they flew I had too many car problems to deal with.
Update 7-24-2022
My friend
Retroman
gave me a mature colony of these he had been keeping in a big hexagon-shaped tank. This happened to be the same tank he used to successfully breed them in for many years.
The tank was filled with dirt and extremely heavy, so while moving it out of his house, we hit a few bumps that partially collapsed some of the dirt. When I got home, I had to dump the entire thing out in a huge plastic bin and retrieve the whole colony. Luckily the queen was safe and uninjured.
I put the colony of about 200 or so workers in test tubes laying in a plastic tub until their new setup is finished.
I decided to modify the tank slightly, using the same concept of my Dirt Box formicariums. Aside form the obvious hydration advantages, it will also keep this thing from weighing 200 pounds, and hopefully keep the ants tunneling closer to the glass. You can see the pictures of the build process on my Dirt Box formicarium thread here (https://www.formicul...-2023/?p=234106).
Here's the setup once it was finished.
Edited by 100lols, November 12 2023 - 10:59 PM.
Update 9-11-2022
I managed to collect a large amount of these queens on 9-11-2022. I was pretty sure they were going to fly that day and I turned out to be right. I got there early enough to grab them while they were still digging.
After the sun goes down, they are pretty much finished digging, so if you want to collect them after that, you will be digging rocks, and that is not fun at all.
This is the terrain.
Update 11-1-2022
As always, these queens just don't want to settle down, and it is very hard to get them to produce much. I boosted some with P. rugosus pupae which usually helps. I also put some of them in the few Dirt Box setups I have left.
On 11-1-2022 one of the queens finally got it's first worker.
Update 1-20-2023
After the colony Retroman gave me moved into their new setup, and I could see them in a few spots, but not much. Over time, I was able to see less and less of them, until eventually I couldn't see them at all. Even the foraging continued to decrease until I would only see a worker or two every once and a while outside the nest.
At the time of this update, I was no longer seeing anything at all and was starting to think that the colony may have died. I just left it alone and made sure it remained hydrated and figured I would just continue waiting to see if any of them ever come out again.
As for the new colonies, most of them either died or were sold, and i only had a few left with a couple workers each.
Update 8-13-2023
For the last six months, not a single worker from the mature colony was seen, and I was almost sure they were dead until the day of this update when I found the nest opened up and one of them foraging around. I couldn't believe it. I quickly dropped a pile of seeds in there and waited for the worker to find them. I came back a little later and to my surprise, there were about 40 of them out collecting seeds! Apparently the colony was still alive and well.
As for the new colonies, at the time of this update, they were all gone except one. That colony got all the way down to only one worker, and had only that one worker for a few months before it gained a few more again.
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