53 replies to this topic

[Aaron567]

June 17, 2020

 

The first pupa has arrived for the original queen.

 

 

When I opened the test tube this time, she ran up ready to attack.

 

 

 

I should also add that I now have a group of 3 T. bicarinatum queens that I recently caught at my light. They have a small batch of eggs so far.

 

[Aaron567]

June 26, 2020

 

First workers for the solo queen. Impressively, this queen was able to get through the entire founding process with only two termite alates, and her gaster stayed plump the whole time.

 

[AntsExodus]

Congrats bro!

[Aaron567]

July 30, 2020

 

After nearly a month, the lone queen has at least 15 workers and they just got their own outworld. One of the 4-queen groups was not producing anything so I decided to cull them. Now I am left with two 4-queen groups which are now getting their first workers.

 

Single queen.

 

4-queen colony with two workers.

 

The other 4-queen group, with no workers yet but very soon to have the first ones.

[Aaron567]

August 30, 2020

 

In the last update one month ago, I had three Tetramorium bicarinatum colonies, one colony with 1 queen and two colonies with 4 queens. I am now down to just one colony of 4 queens because I sold the other two. 

 

This is the single colony I will be posting from this point onwards. There are two dealate queens and two winged queens, and about 30 workers. They have a good brood pile going. These pictures are not the greatest, because their test tube is very dirty and I cannot get any sort of good angle on them. Maybe they'll be in a formicarium by their next update.

 

[ponerinecat]

Beautiful ants. I really do need to start looking for the native species sometime.

[Aaron567]

October 9, 2020

 

This colony has been growing a lot. They've surpassed 110 workers and have a large brood pile. I don't think I have a formicarium for them to go in, so I'm not sure when that will happen.

 

Just a phone picture because their tube is dirty and it's hard to photograph them in a test tube at this point.

 

[Ants_Dakota]

looks great! 

[Aaron567]

November 23, 2020

 

They have surpassed 500 workers now. Both male and female alates have begun to eclose. I will be moving them into a bigger, nicer formicarium pretty soon. Also, they smell very bad.. something I noticed when I kept them a couple years ago as well. Once they reach a couple hundred workers they just smell very bad, I don't know if it's because of their waste or what, but they're the worst-smelling species I have ever kept.

 

[Aaron567]

December 4, 2020

 

Right after the last update about 2 weeks ago, this colony began to have a rather large die-off of which I do not know the cause. It looks like they lost over a hundred workers out of the ~500+ they had at the time. I happened to have made a DIY nest for them that I was planning on moving them into eventually, but upon seeing that they were dying in such large numbers I immediately added some final touches to their new nest (a coat of blue paint) so that I could move them in immediately, hoping a new nest would stop their die-off. After moving them I'm happy to say that the die-off has stopped. I think a big possibility of what could've killed them was the fact that their outworld doesn't have any sort of ventilation, so maybe the air in their setup just got really gross. I should probably fix that.

 

I did a new worker count, and just like in the last update, the colony has just over 500 workers. So, if the die-off hadn't happened, I think they'd have 600-650 by now.

 

 

In the first picture below there is a wingless female reproductive who I am pretty sure has not mated because of her worker-like behavior and her skinny gaster which is clearly not producing eggs. I do wonder if she'll eventually mate and become an egg-laying queen; same goes for the other females. There hasn't been any mating yet from what I can tell.

 

[JesseTheAntKid]

UPDATE?!?!?!??!?!

Edited by JesseTheAntKid, December 24 2023 - 4:01 PM.

[AsdinAnts]

this journal was updated three years ago 😔

Edited by AsdinAnts, December 24 2023 - 5:08 PM.

[Zzz]

I would assume the colony has died but if not UUUPPPDDDDAAATTTTEEEE!!!!

[Serafine]

That or they spiraled out of control, like most of those inbreeding colonies do.

Either way, the user hasn't posted here for almost a year.