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A little update of this afternoon.
In my dispare for feeding my ants insects I went looking for insect larva.
You the ones that hang on a thread from trees.
Wel I went behind my house and found a plant with a lot of spiderweb look a like in it.
I went closer to look and there were like thouseands of caterpillars.
So I collected about 5 and went home.
I put one in the entrance of the nest.
They first went beserk because something entered there nest.
But finally one found him and started attacking after that the second one started attacking.
At last the third ant pulled him inside the nest and it came down on a place with a lot of ants.
So they start attacking him with all of them and finally they took him upstairs where the queen and eggs normally are.
The other caterpillars I put them the basin and they may hunt them therself.
Well see ya next time
Interesting! I have a (small) colony of F. fusca too, and I fed them a caterpillar today. At first they were very scared of it (for some reason...), but at night they got it and ate it because it had disappeared. I haven't seen them eat anything yet, but apparently they do eat because the queen is laying a lot of brood and the colony is doing very well.
One question: is it helpful to heat the colony a bit? I know it will stimulate growth rates, but since it is a European species will they suffer from heat? (I was thinking of heating a bit to ~25 Celsius since it is quite cold at the moment due to the dreary weather.)
Heating to 25 wouldnt hurt at all.. in fact 25 is probabily perfect.. Ive never tried mine with caterpillar.. might try that one. They do like earth worms tho.. and im sure you have lots of them in your garden.
Hey,
You could do this. Butt i would't take the risk.
I don't have heating, but in my appartment it's always around 20-25 degrees :D
Cool you did the caterpillar too, apperntly they love them because at this moment they have already captured 4 of the six caterpiller and dragged them to the nest :D
Pl ease keep me also a little bit posted how youre colony is doing i'm very interrested.
see ya later
Hey,
Here foto's of the caterpillars and ants.
http://94.100.115.41/583600001-583650000/583644301-583644400/583644320_6_PI1M.jpeg
Caterpillar
http://94.100.114.56/583600001-583650000/583644801-583644900/583644805_6_iWUz.jpeg
Ant attacking Caterpillar
see ya
A little update:
The ants have done some major work on the entrance ant it's almost totally closed.
A little opening is left for the ants.
Yes, they do love caterpillars! In the woods here they are so easy to find in this time of the year. I also fed them a cricket (I use these to feed my M. rubra, they don't seem to like caterpillars much) and they loved it as well. They also like my honey-water solution. Does anybody have any experience with honey-milk solution? I have read this on a French forum and the idea seems good (proteins and sugar, what more could you want!) but is milk healthy for ants?
I still keep them in a test tube at the moment, the colony isn't very big. It has 2 queens ( :lol: ) and about 35 workers. I hope it will grow fast (because it has 2 queens this should be on problem!). Their speed is quite nice though, just strange that they aren't very aggressive (I guess this is why F. sanguinea likes to rob their pupae).
Yeah, heating them could be very risky, especially if they do not have enough water... and if they have too much water it could evaporate a bit and this species doesn't like moist environments. Though my room is usually quite chilly (my windows point northward, and I have shadow from trees all over my room) so I guess heating them a bit might not hurt. But I will not take the risk yet :wink: . Wouldn't like to lose the colony! Better to let them grow slower than to get them killed.
Yeah you saying that they don't like moist air got me thinking because the basin i have has a lid and i occasionally put some water in the Y-tong but my moist level is already on 82%!!
Could this be bad for F. Fusca???
Wether or not it is bad I do not know, but my colony even moved out of the test tube to a completely dry spot under a piece of paper I had put in there, my guess because the test tube was too moist for them. They really do seem to dislike water, but I do not know if it would harm them if their environment is too moist. (In nature they live in completely dry sand like dunes or heath maybe this is why...)
Today I made a nice discovery by the way in the heath, several spieces on a single square metre! L. flavus, L. niger, F. fusca and M. rubra all really close to each other, and just 2 metres away there was a nest of F. sanguinea! Strange that they didn't butcher each other yet ;) L. niger is very aggressive in my experience and Formica sanguinea even more so.
Well I also notice it because if I put water in the Y-tong they usually move down in the Y-tong and later on when the water is vaporized they move back up.