Messor barbarus chance of survive?

[Spore]

realy!!!??? Wow! Who would have thought that ants eat bird food?

[mzfckr]

you can eat them too if you wish. and seeds dont exatcly equal bird food only.
sry for bad english

Mz

[ashhad1]

hehe us eating bird food i thought about it too but it smells so wierd sometimes lol plus bird seeds contain sunflower and other seeds which messor's would like

[JimmyVe]

Yes. They eat almost every (small) seed you can find. And if you buy a large package of bird seeds you have enough food for a hole year.

[thomie]

You can't eat normal bird seeds you buy at a local supermarket or petstore.
If the seeds are to toxic to eat for humans (becouse of anti-insect stuff) (above the food toxin quality norm for humans in your country) than it's often allowed to eat for animals.

With the seeds in shops some birds become 14 years, when you give them good seeds they'll become 40 years!! I don't know if the toxic also affects ants, but to advoid problems i guess you better buy seeds for human use :p . (this is what i heard from a parrot freak )

[JimmyVe]

Hey didn't know that. I'm going to ask around about this. If it is true i stop using these seeds for my ants.

[mzfckr]

if you do, maybe i should do this too.( i try to learn from pro's )

[Spore]

This is very worrying news. I will be sure to chek around.

[JimmyVe]

Don't have a good answer to it yet. Anyone else ?

[Spore]

No, unfortualy i have no news. none at all. none what so ever. Nothing to say. No posts. At all...

[thomie]

:p I guess it's true becouse animals aren't as inportant as humans for the law in most countries. I guess also the food have a less quality bottom.

For humans the toxin bottom is really low, i remember (not sure) that if the toxic is 4x more in our food it still wont affect us (what we know now, maybe all the toxin is bad for us ) .

[thomie]

Okey another update of my Messor barbarus colony.

They are on a low temperature at the moment. Becouse i don't heat the test tubes anymore the Queen went to the sand part of the nest with the breed.
The colony have digged truth the sand and they've created some rooms for the seeds. I've got two worlds connected to the nest. One world is used for most of the seed rubbish and a little bit of sand (most got removed by me).
The other world is for the feeding, i put there seeds and insects.

I'm giving them fly larvas (used for fishing, i suppose they're the same). The Messor barbarus colony took it away soon and guess the larva is eaten already (the majors will probable be able to cut truth the larva soon).

I also gave a larva to my Mymica rubra colony, they seem to have problems with digging truth the larva. But i'm sure they're able to eat them (they also digged truth the ?plastic foil) .

* I just looked at my colony again. A major was draging a larva towards the nest. After a few Cm of walk the major droped the larva and walked to the tube which go to the nest. After the major reached the tube she returned to the larva and started draging it again.
It looked like she planned the best road to the nest (with an larva 4x heavy as she is an detour costs much energy).

[JimmyVe]

Nice to hear they are doing good.

[thomie]

Today i've found two dried out larva's (they became brown) in the Messor barbarus outer world. I guess they can't eat the hull of the larva's so they suck them dry i guess.
I hope there will be enough energy in the larva's for the new breed etc..

When i look inside of the nest i where able to spot the place where they keep the larva. nearly all of the rooms are at the glass so i'm able to see them well.
Unfortunately the colony prefers to stay inside of the nest, so i often cant spot any ants.. (watching into the nest gives a lot of stress).

I hope that with the grow of the colony the courage of the colony will rise and that there will be ants outside all the time.
I guess the colony have about 50 workers, but it could also be 100 or 30 (The disadvantage of a sand nest).

[Zagone]

Alot of factors come in to play when it's about how many ants are out foraging. I think on average for most European species it's at most 20% out foraging. But for instance if the ants have been unsuccessful in finding food, they might become less active outside and turn more to nursing, or if they have enough food, too much to take care of in the nest, close to either befor or after hibernation.... Atleast these are some things I've observed. My Camponotus are only out 1 at a time, and 2 on rare ocassions. Think they have too much to take care of in the nest after the move though. But, with population growth, it's likely their activity will increase massively. Which is why larger colonies requires more/bigger basins.