Hello Guys , well the termites are doing great , there last Nymph from the first brood of eggs has now became a adult worker and im pretty sure its one of normal larger ones
I have seen the Queen lating eggs so i now know how to tell them apart.
The king has one antena missing and the queen is slightly larger.
Current population
* 1 Queen
* 1 King
* Roughtly 32 Workers
* 5 Nymphs
* large pile of eggs roughly 22
* 3 Soldiers
The fungus garden is growing aswell the workers seem to be working on it alot and are still taking dried grasses and wood, they seem to prefer the wood. The wood is dry twigs i have found outside. They have come of a willow tree and were dead and dried out. Now for the exciting news , I have seen the queen and king Mating !!!
It is not known how termites mate but i shall now describe what i saw, I would of took pictures but i didnt relise what i was seeing untill it had ocurred.
HOW TERMITES MATE IN THE NEST
The queen stand up tall and raises her abdomen so its pointing upwards and she holds this position for a few minutes. The king approches her and walks along side her before turning around and backing up so the tip of his adomen touches hers. He then produces a clear droplet of liguid that the queen then sucks up throu the tip of her adomen
the king then moves away and they stay facing away from each other for a few minutes before carrying on interacting with the rest of the colony
Exciting stuff. If i see the queen signalling to mate again i shall grab my camera and try and film it
Heres pictures guys.
Larger nymph final moult, this worker is larger then the rest and is as big as the nantic soldiers in the colony so i assume this is the first proper worker.
The King tends to a nymph while the Queen gets the tip of her adomen cleaned
The fungus garden , growing longer, hopfully the little white specks all over it is the fungus beginning to take hold.
Thats my update for now , i will update end of next week again , hopfully more nymphs would of hatched out by then.
Take care guys and thank you for reading
Adam