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Click to view full story of "Formica polyctena"

Skippy: Formica polyctena (26. Feb 2008 17:11)

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Be ware these species are protected in Belgium and Germany (and probably some more countries) It is illegal to catch ore keep them !
In Slovakia they are not protected so Skippy can keep them but please don't sell them to users where they are protected.
Thanks

Hello...

here is story about very nice ant and formicarium.
I made this formicarium one all weekend. It was constructed for some Messor or Cataglyphis, but one day I get in nature one colony with some queens of Formica polyctena , because I wont study this interesting ant specie in formicarium. If you know , in one colony is about 50+ queens , and I got only some , so I think it is not so much bad for nature. Of course , there is about 50 big colonies on one hill, very nice locality and I´ve come there every year to look on.

I havn´t had a formicarium where I could get this cought colony , so I got them into that terarium for messor.

It is VERY agressive ant I researched , and after 15 minutes after get boil with ants into terarium , it started build some small hole to hide queens.

After 2 hours I known , I lost my nice formicarium :lol: :lol: :lol: ;)
It started building some ant Babylon from small stones. I´ve got there some wooden picks to make it easy for them , because one small stone is maybe 20x more weight like one worker.

First photos are of terarium before... it was very nice :D
Photos after are photos during making some HUGE nest there :D ... I called it Babylon.
This they were made during night ... I´ll getting here actually photos of building theirs stone-soil nest.

ENJOY ;)

SteveUK28: (26. Feb 2008 18:05)

ohh very very nice Skippy.. Do u have any more details of these ants.. they look very nice :D

Skippy: (26. Feb 2008 18:33)

Yes these ants looks nice , but they making a lot of formic acid :( ... you can only get hand into terarium and get it out , and all hand is wet by formic acid :P ...

http://www.mack.neostrada.pl/gformicapolyctena.html - queen
http://www.mack.neostrada.pl/gformicarufa.html - worker of Formica rufa , very similar to Formica polyctena

mzfckr: (26. Feb 2008 19:27)

its ytong in the basin? and you could get picture of nest with ants?

Skippy: (26. Feb 2008 19:49)

Yes , here is it ;) --- I´ve taken on camera only some chambers because they dont like light and run very quickly :( ...

JimmyVe: (26. Feb 2008 22:27)

Very nice Skippy. The pictures and the farm, i love it. ;)

These species are protected here in Belgium, you may not catch them. Don't they build high ground nest in the wild ?

Skippy: (26. Feb 2008 22:33)

Yes they build , but this specie starting build only at this time , now are there only holes in ground (nature) , and full of ants everywhere :)

in Slovak are not protected this specie ... only rufa and others , because here we have a lot of them somewhere

Kale^^: (27. Feb 2008 05:08)

Nice pics. Queen looks cool.

Who would like to raise rufa? Yuck, they smell very bad & hard to keep.
In finland F.Rufa is very common species.

Skippy: (27. Feb 2008 16:10)

I think formica rufa and polyctena looks a bit like that same , and smell too :D (formic acid) aaand also hard to keep (need a lot of insects)

JimmyVe: (27. Feb 2008 17:34)

How are you going to keep them when the colony gets bigger ? Can they still live in a ytong ?


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