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lol messorus They prob was.. im in the process of trying to move them now :) wish me luck lol
Hello,
I receaved my small colony of Pheidole pallidula end of december : One queen with about twelve workers .
but disaster came immediately. The packing around the test tube necessitate some efforts to remove and doing so the cotton plug fall off with the queen and 3 workers on it.The queen was OK but 2 workers were lost. Also a big drop of water had formed on the nest side of the tube and two or three workers had drowned .I can not say if small brood (the ants were just comming out of hibernation) was lost and the gaster of the queen was small and flat but after a few days it become bigger and round.
I become worry as the number of workers fall until after one month only 4 workers were left alive but the brood had become more and bigger, and then, new ,a bit bigger worker emmerged from nymph .Now they are about 8 or 10.
The water reserve of the tube is near exausted but they seems not to want to move yet to the new nest or to the test tube half full with drinking water behind a cotton plug .
Glad that it seems to be going abit better. I wouldn't worry too much about the water reservoir if there are nesting location nearby for them.
When I got my Messor h esperius the guy who sent it drained the reservoir to ensure the ants wouldn't drown
incase of accident in the shipping, so theirs is drained too. But I put in an extra test-tube with water into the basin just incase. And their future nest is also hooked up if they'd rpefer to move there.
So unless you got some kind of syringe to get water into ther current test-tube, just sit abck and hope they figure out they need to move to the other test-tube if it gets too dry.
Seeing how they're 'pest-ants' I'd trust them to know how to servive if it's possible. :)
Now my Pheidole palidula have moved to the other smaller test tube with water provision about 15 days ago
instead of the nest , no problem. Today there is much brood about 20 workers , one nymph at least is a soldier .
Hi,
The quantity of brood incriesed very mutch ,the number of workers also incriesed but no soldier yet.
I think we can say now that this colony fundation is succesfull .In a way they are active like mini M.rubra but the brood is bigger in number .By comparison my Camponotus are very slugish.
Amrik
I got a pallidula colony late last year. They grew very quickly after some inital deaths like yours. I think the first soldier was at a colony size of about 40. Now they are at around 500 (might be more, but difficult to count) workers with maybe 70 soldiers. I am now feeding them bits of meat most days. There seems to have been another explosion of brood. I reckon there might be another 200-300 at various stages of development. Once they get going it will be very quick.
One thing I've noticed is that about 15% of the soldiers they produce are smaller. Almost half way between a worker and major with narrower head. I'm not sure if I would say that they are strictly dimorphic.
I don't think you can keep them in the test tube much longer. What are you planning to move them to? I used a plaster nest like in the YouTube video with a tube to an arena. They have now filled the nest and I need to build something bigger quite quickly I think.
Hi,
Sorry to have been away so long from this subject.
The Pheydoles p.are about two hundred workers and soldiers strong now with much brood . The room is at about 24°c thats a compromise for the different sort of ants who are in this room.
Pheydole are dynamic , actives and prolific but they don't seems to like the acrilik nest at all they prefer the the test tube so I connect an alfa ant basin with a natural looking gallery vertical plaster nest I have made so we can see if they move in.
I give them killed domestic crickets or other safe arthropodes and tried sesame seeds :They don't take it , I think it is to big but they like very much poppy seeds contrary to my Tetramoriums c. who like sesame seeds and not the poppy seeds.
Great pics Jimmy :D
Hi,
As soon as I connected the basin with the plaster nest they seems to like it and part of the colony settle in it
A few days ago all the colony move in it for good . Now the colony have hundred of workers (I can not really
count them any more )with a small proportion of majors :These little ants are very active (and faster moving
than other Myrmicines ) that's permit them to care for much brood if the food is enough .
As I wanted to say , now the colony have several hundredS of workers and much brood.
There are not so many soldiers : One for about thirty workers.