This is a wild caught colony of Formica Dolosa that I captured around 2 months ago. They were put into a temporary homemade formicarium until I decided what to do with them. I made the mistake of leaving them there and just feeding them some sugar water and throwing some bugs into their outworld. I never saw them forage or eat and they became totally inactive. I thought that they were maybe a nocturnal ant because I had just gotten into ant keeping and didn't know much about identification. Soon they were moved into a small dirt nest. It was a rather young colony and had around 50 workers when I first caught it, but now has about 75 or more because so many workers have already eclosed. They had been in the very small dirt nest since for about a month, but I managed to move them out of that and into a test tube, and then from there into a 10 gallon tank. Their favorite foods are honey, spiders, craneflys, and small moths. They will not eat anything that is to large to drag into the nest, and are very picky about sugar sources.
Edited by TennesseeAnts, June 23 2017 - 7:06 AM.