Lasius niger concerns. Help appreciated!

Lasius niger concerns. Help appreciated!

Beitragvon Seph0n » 2. Sep 2011 02:52

Hey there. After lurking the forums for some time, I now finally came to make my second post!

Here's my concerns listed in numeric order.

1. I boosted my colony with a few wild-caught cocoons some months ago. They hatched and pledged their allegiance to their new queen without questions. The issue regarding this, is that I often see my original nantics bite and pull the new workers around. The new workers completely ignore this, but it seems like the nantics are somewhat against these new un-invited guests. What is going on?

2. Some of the boosted workers seem to have gone rogue. They dig their own tunnels in the basin, and doesn't interact with the colony at all. Is this normal behavior, or is it a result of the nantics driving them off into "the wild"? The boosted workers does not defend them selves, they don't attack each other, and they care for the queen. It's only the nantics that hate them.

3. My colony still lives inside their test tube, and as far as I can tell, everything is going fine. It's too crowded to actually see the queen, but I sometimes see a worker carrying a larvae or cocoon around. No eggs though. My third question is then; 99% of them spend 99% of their time inside the tube doing absolutely nothing. The just cling to the wall, move a pupae or two and that's it. Even though they are many, I rarely see them outside their tube. Is this normal behavior for other-than-nantic ants? Being lazy as I see it. Perhaps premature hibernation?

4. I feed them various dead insects as well as fruit flies. (The insects I bought from an online store). As far as I can tell, they do come out to forage since the food I give them is sometimes missing. Now today, I noticed that they'd made a pile outside their tube made out of dead moldy insects. As far as I can tell, the insects are whole (only the store bought insects) and they haven't eaten anything of them. So now I'm getting a bit worried, since I don't know if they feed besides the rare fruit flies I give them. (I feed them honey dew which they regularly visit, so I'm referring to the larvae mostly). Is it a bad sign that they bring food back, and then store it outside the tube for it to mold?

5. I'm going away this weekend, and so I would like to know some basics about how to care for my ants while I'm gone. I realize that these few days won't matter much as long as I leave water, honey and flies in the plenty, but I would like to know what I should do on longer vacations.

6. A Lasius niger care sheet would be greatly appreciated as well.



Thanks for reading my text-wall. I hope anyone can shed some light on my questions.

Seph0n.
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Re: Lasius niger concerns. Help appreciated!

Beitragvon baumarkthammer » 2. Sep 2011 09:27

Hello,

1/2. This behavious could mean that you have boosted your colony with the wrong species. There are many ants that look like Lasius niger and only quite experienced keepers are able to identify them as such. For example Lasius platythorax looks very simular to Lasius niger, only the prefered habitat differes much. If it is as I suggested, then it is a normal behaviour but no reason to worry. The ants as you said are taking care of everything and probably will do so in the future. Ants from different species can live together in capitvity, but they have to belong to the same species (there are some exeptations). The two species however will not be able to interact with each other completley, but they will try their best to keep the colony alive.

3. It is normal for most of the workers to do pretty much nothing in most if the colonies. When there is a big source of food to take care of or some kind of danger they will get active. In some species however the most of the colony never seems to do anything. In nature by the way it is the same. In captivity ants mostly get so much food they don´t really need to be very quick in collecting it because most of the time the colony is well fed. But rising the temperature should help I think.

4. I think that the colony just doesn´t need any more food. Also ants sometimes are able to eat from insects so that you don´t even see parts missing, even bigger ants sometimes manage to do so. How warm do you keep them?

5. In my opinion even a week doesn´t matter. The ants can do long without food because of their ability to share food they have in their bodys. I sometimes leave my ants alone for one week. If you are away for longer you can prepare a test tube with sugar-water, you just fill a testtube with suger-water and close it up with cotton. That way the ants can eat from it for month.
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Re: Lasius niger concerns. Help appreciated!

Beitragvon Seph0n » 4. Sep 2011 19:08

I've been on a prolonged weekend, and here's an update.

Just over the course of this weekend, the whole tube has been filled with dirt and there's an enormous amount of eggs in the center. It should be noted that I moved them into a 30x40 formacarium, half filled with a sand-loam mixture I made, the same day I left. I feed them everytime their food is missing from their little plastic plate. The extra food I fed them so that they wouldn't go hungry has been taken, and this time there is no moldy corpses outside their tube. There is however, a drowned ant in the honey bowel they visit.
I looks like I shouldn't be concerned. Your response has been very helpful so far, though I still wonder about the nanitics bullying the boosted ants. I think your theory might be correct, that I boosted with the wrong ants. At least the queen doesn't mind. (As I moved the tube during the night, all the "crazed" ants that slept in their tunnels were abandoned. I couldn't figure a way to get them all, though I dug a few up).
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