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HI Adam,
I had the same issue with my colony.
Usually they have a breakdown after transport and before they re-establish, which takes 4-6 weeks.
One of the keys for this species - according to my limited expereince - also is offering a variety of food. you will notice them accepting different kinds of food periodically ( usually in 4-8 day intervalls)
My mixture is usually:
- crickets
- meat-fly larvae
- mealworm
- roaches ( argentinian ones, size adjusted to colony )
- terfly
- the occasional spider off your cellar :) ( just to be able to pretend they r useful to my wife.... )
The secondary experience is, if you feed the colony enough animal rotein, they will not harvest seeds at all. So if they carry in seeds, try mealworms or terfly or small roaches ( the tiny ones )
Edit: drosphyla of course, too, but I do not offer them to my colony anymore, since i would need hundreds to keep it fed
Thankyou for your advice Major , i will offer lots of diffrent types of food , so far i can offer crickets small ones , spiders , fruit flys and i have just bought some wax moth larvae , they killed one of them but didnt seem to keen on eating it . in the end they just left it there. :?
So basically in 4 -6 weeks i should know if they are going to survive. Do you think they will be ok with one queen , i wonder if the stress of being transported etc was the reason she died :?:
well my colony exploded literally with one queen within three to four months.
do not worry, as long as they r warm, o´moist and well fed, they should do fine.
one addition I do have, though. I offered my colony chambers cut out of ytong, filled with earth, so they could adjust the size of the necessary chambers as they need it.
I found they change this quite often, so maybe it wouldbe good to offer them an area with wet soil, so they can, if necesary, build chambers or seal the tube.
Yeah i agree , i have put some steralised insect substrate in the faraging tank now , i have noticed the workers carrying bits back into the nest so thy can make it how they like :). I shall just have to be patient now and keep an eye out for sighns of population expansion :D
Thanks again mate for your advice :D
Thankyou for your advice Major , i will offer lots of diffrent types of food , so far i can offer crickets small ones , spiders , fruit flys and i have just bought some wax moth larvae , they killed one of them but didnt seem to keen on eating it . in the end they just left it there. :?
So basically in 4 -6 weeks i should know if they are going to survive. Do you think they will be ok with one queen , i wonder if the stress of being transported etc was the reason she died :?:
How do you catch fruit flys and put them in the formicarium/nest/test tube ?
DigiSERBIA, I usually do that by unpeeling a banana and leaving it near a window. In less than 8 hours there will be some fruit flies, then I get a big plastic bag and put it around the banana. It is a bit messy, but really easy to do 8)
DigiSERBIA, I usually do that by unpeeling a banana and leaving it near a window. In less than 8 hours there will be some fruit flies, then I get a big plastic bag and put it around the banana. It is a bit messy, but really easy to do 8)
So you end up with dead fruit flyes because they dont have oxygen? and then u put them dead in?
Hello Digiserbia , i just buy flightless fruit flys from a reptile shop , they cannot get away then :grin: lol
Looks like your gonna need loads Adam, did you see my thread on FF's? http://www.antstore.net/viewtopic.php?f=133&t=16374
Hello Andie , no i didnt mate but i have now :grin: , great thread , i used to breed fruit flys but had problems with mites big time , thou mine at the time were being raised on banana . Glad to see a alternative :D
Will do some fruitfly breeding me thinks :P