ANTSTORE World of Ants

[SteveUK28]

Awesome.. I use an Oly myself.. i have an E-3 What are you shooting with pal ?

[Andie]

Mines an E-500 getting on a bit now like me

[Ciddler]

Very nice pictures. Keep up the good work! Do you already have an arena ready?

[Andie]

Ive decided just to let them establish themselves in the test tube for a while or at the most perhaps a smallish platic container. Today i put some dandylion seeds and fruit flies in the tube for them but the queen pushed them as far back from the wet end as she could and i havent seen the 2 workers showing any interest either. Perhaps to young yet.
I have lots of glass and acrylic tanks left over from my dart frog breeding days so i have plenty of ideas for them as arena's.

I'm also more optamistic for the second queen as her eggs have began to hatch.

[Markus]

In the first Week there is not much action, the queen got enough reserves and one, two or three Workers don't eat much too.
That changes with the weeks after the first worker.
But I would say, you should feed them first in the tube without arena until they have 15-20 workers, they seem so eat more, if you put the food in front their noases!
Working good seems to feed every day small maelwormparts and Heimchen (don't know the english word Hyperlinks sind nur für registrierte Nutzer sichtbar) better their "ripped" big legs - sounds strange, but I don't have the right words...
Seeds don't have to be given every day, but you should change them if they become bad...

[Andie]

Thanks Markus. I think The workers or is "pygmys" the correct term for the fisrt workers just seem to delicate to let out so i will do as you suggest and wait until there are more. Crickets are the word your looking for.

Just a quick pic of two of my Polyrhachis dives tucking into a dungfly using the olympus with rubbish flash...



Photo with the same camera through the test tube. M.Barbarus.
You can see 4 stages of development in the dolls.

[SteveUK28]

Very very nice with that Oly mate.. Excellent photos.. What other Spec. do you have then??

[adam james]

Hey Andie Great thread , May i inject my information, Correct me as i may be wrong guys but its just what i have read in the past. Isnt it the bigger soilder type workers that actually use the seeds to turn into a sort of ant bread that the colony then eats. I would of thort maybe at the begining of the colony stage they would be more inclined to eating bugs and sweet stuff.

Adam

[Markus]

No, I have a small colony with more then 20 workers now and they already eat seeds now, the small Workers simply have sometimes problems to crack them so that making the seeds cracked first maybe help...
There is one ant with a big head in the colony from the beginning: the queen!

[Andie]

Very very nice with that Oly mate.. Excellent photos.. What other Spec. do you have then??

Presently just the olyrhachis dives and Messor barbarus Hopefully more later

[adam james]

Hello Markus thankyou for correcting me , like i said lol it was wot i had read in the past somwhere and wasnt sure.

Adam

[Andie]

This pic maybe of some interest as it shows a young worker opening a dandylion seed.

[Andie]

Just a quick update on the second queen. She now has some pupae, she must be getting pretty hungry by now.

[Andie]

The first queen now has about 13 workers and an unknown amount of eggs, larvae and pupae which the queen is standing over. I'm offering cut up mealworms and blue bottles with the dandylion seeds which they have gathered up near the wet end of the test tube. I also offered a drop of honey on the end of a match stick today which they all seemed to relish.

[bugsy]

Awesome pictures, I only keep Camponotus species and i forget how quick other species grow. I'm considering messor structor with multiple queens as my next colony. Keep the pics coming mate there great.