June 5th, Acquired a few O. smaragdina new queens. Placed them in small test tubes with extra holes drilled in. The holes are to increase airflow for this species, or they will die. Water reservoir is purposely made small to prepare them for eventual move to tree formicarium.
June 12th, All queens have larvae, and are using them to spin webs
June 15th, Tree formicarium completed and I placed the queen with the most brood in. I removed the cotton plug from the test tube and simply placed the test tube on a branch.
June 25th, nanitics are starting to eclose.
July 25th, there is about 15 nanitics in the tree formicarium. Picture quality is bad because it's very hard to get the camera inside the formicarium to take pictures.
August 7, big day today, the tree colony has finally moved out of the test tube. The test tube has been dry for a while, and the colony chose a spot on the top of the tree. Unfortunately, the colony completed the move when I was at work, so I did not get any footage of the move. There is about 20 workers, and a little brood. It was difficult to feed this colony, so brood count is a little low, but I still saw a few pupae and eggs.
New nesting site:
The nest:
August 8, Gave the tree colony its first meal worm, and they accepted it and dragged it into the nest. Previously the colony only accepted sugar water and fruit flies. In fact, the the big dark spot inside the nest is actually a pile of dead fruit flies.
Edited by venator, August 9 2018 - 6:51 PM.
