Lewis: Re: Hopeing to get a colony of Camponotus cruentatus (13. Feb 2010 16:08)

cool thanks :) mabe it was just stress :(
i have a queen bur the eggs are not coming :(
i check them once week :( but still no action :(

darradar: Re: Hopeing to get a colony of Camponotus cruentatus (13. Feb 2010 20:55)

you must be petient, its the only way to be, you already know these are a slow growing spec, but if i may just say, it is still cold, have you offerd any bugs? the queen needs protien to produce eggs,
these are not a quick fix spec Lewis, it took many months for the numbers in my colony to vastly improve, i was a little like you at first, but as you gain more petience you will then begin to enjoy your colony, its a remarkable time to be able to observe the queen, i rarely see mine now, because of the shear numbers, enjoy her while you can :wink:

Lewis: Re: Hopeing to get a colony of Camponotus cruentatus (13. Feb 2010 21:09)

thank you yes as i am queit young i am a bit unpatient :(
but when the wokers did die i manedged to get them to have two workers but then we had a power cut and it was far in the minises when we had allot of snow and they had a small bit of warmth from a heat mat but when the power cut happend both workers died and the queen almoust did :(
i will give here some thing now mabe a small spider?

darradar: Re: Hopeing to get a colony of Camponotus cruentatus (14. Feb 2010 16:26)

low temeporatures will not kill your colony.....mine have had NO heat sorce since last oct and tho we didnt go far into the minusis we did drop below 0, if the small colony had no reserves to see them thru then its more likely that which killed them,
yes offer her a small spider, make sure you kill it tho first, and in the future, its best to get some wax worms and allow them to chrisolise and then turn into moths, freeze the moths and then you will have a source of protien to offer her, when the colony is small in numbers its hard to kill the moths, so freezing them and offering them thawed is ok, otherwise live food is too much for them to deal with, it took many months and numbers before mine were able to kill the moths.... :wink:

Lewis: Re: Hopeing to get a colony of Camponotus cruentatus (14. Feb 2010 19:48)

yeah maybe it was that which killed them
she seemed to like the spider and sort of sucked at it for a while and i noticed her gaster did get swollen :)
hope for some eggs now
yeah i would not give it live

darradar: Re: Hopeing to get a colony of Camponotus cruentatus (14. Feb 2010 22:53)

i hope she pulls thru...but do not expect eggs within days......give her a few weeks to gather strength :wink:

Lewis: Re: Hopeing to get a colony of Camponotus cruentatus (15. Feb 2010 15:02)

yeah i will not look at her for a while and just hope for the best :)

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