The journal of a C. scutellaris colony. Queen caught in a local nuptial flight September 2017.
The queen went through her claustral phase in AntKit's acrylic founding chamber with an attached water container.
She is actually the only queen who successfully went through the claustral phase in it. I have two of AntKit's acrylic founding chambers, and had 4 failures and 1 success.
It is most likely due to a poor hidratation system, and the chamber being too large for the queen to feel secure (4x2cm).
The moisture sponge is not accessible to the queen, so she cannot drink from it, unless almost flooded and water delivered through capillary action between layers of acryl.
She spent most of her time tucked inside the "sawtooth connector" rather than inside the nest. All of the queens preferred the narrow tube-like space of the connector, two of them so much that they were constantly in contact with the wet cotton of the attached water tank. They molded and died. It is a pity the "coming soon" queen excluder accessory never saw the light of day.
I must also point out that she is doing worse than two other C. scutellaris queens that got test tube setups. By the time hey got 10 nanitics each, she had only gotten four.
She now has eight workers and several larvae. I connected the AntKit nest to a formicarium with an outworld and additional nesting space.
I decorated the outworld with a pine branch that I found locally and baked in the oven. It is serving as a "dining table" as the outworld lid is pretty small and hard to reach the bottom 
Edited by skocko76, June 23 2018 - 9:06 AM.
