ANTSTORE World of Ants

[MajorSpud]

I can only say out of my experience, if there is no special weather condition they usually do not swarm.

I have alatesnin my colony almost permanently and they so far did never swarm unless i killed all oights and just had a moo similated by a small glow. The they leave the nest.

But as i said this is only what happened to my colony in my surroundings and conditions.

[MajorSpud]

I can only say out of my experience, if there is no special weather condition they usually do not swarm.

I have alatesnin my colony almost permanently and they so far did never swarm unless i killed all oights and just had a moo similated by a small glow. The they leave the nest.

But as i said this is only what happened to my colony in my surroundings and conditions.

[Frogger1]

Thanks for the reply, hopefully I can provide the optimum conditions for the alates, it would be amazing to have some new queens in the colony!

[Frogger1]

It's been a while since I updated this thread because I haven't been on the forum in a while so I decided to do an update today. The ants are still doing very well, very healthy and lots are still being produced. I haven't seen the queen for near enough a year but she must be ok with the thousands of ants I see foraging and doing other things.

Unfortunately I have no idea what happened to the alate pupae, maybe because the conditions weren't good enough the colony destroyed them? Is it possible they would just live in the nest until the conditions are good enough for mating?

I recently started pouring water into the fake nests (as the ants did not use them much) to up the humidity and get some more moisture in the substrate. After a few days one nest was used as a path way to carry brood through, they placed the brood just outside of the first fake nest where the soil adjacent to it had soaked up some of the water, but they didn't go to live in the fake nest. Last night I noticed a big trail of mostly workers with some soldiers scouting the second fake nest and I peered inside earlier to find this:

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That single chamber is about 10"x3"x3" (LxHxW) so you can see there is a huge amount of ants inside it, there are still hundreds maybe thousands moving more brood and foraging. The closest half of the chamber with the brood packed in is thick with ants, not just on the walls of the chamber but actually filling that whole area, I also didn't realize just how many majors there were in this colony, all with extended gasters. I tried to see if I could find the queen in there but I guess she is literally in the middle of all of them which is annoying for me. :p I don't believe that is all of the brood as I can only see worker eggs/larvae in that chamber and there is still some brood being carried in but then again that is still all eggs and larvae of workers, no pupae. Maybe the move into the fake nest is still in progress as there is no sign of any larger larvaes and there are no pupaes that I can see and as said earlier the queen hasn't been spotted. I seem to remember when I first got the colony the queen was the last to be escorted to the nest, but then why are there are so many majors already inside the fake nest? Maybe there's more majors outside of the fake nest with the queen and the larger brood?

I have a few clips of the ants here for anyone interested:

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[Frogger1]

Hundreds more workers have moved into the fake nest now, but I realised all the brood in there is all larvae with some eggs, no pupae. The queen also isn't in there so must be in a chamber in the substrate with all the pupae, maybe the move is still in progress but I didn't think they would be so selective with what brood they take into the fake nest. In previous pictures I have posted all the brood (eggs, larvae, pupae) is all kept in the same place, perhaps now the colony is so big they've decided to try organise the brood, I'm not sure though...

[Frogger1]

I just spotted the queen inside the same chamber as in the previous photo so it turns out she has been in there the whole time, it was just so hard to see her because she constantly has a swarm of workers covering her. Now I'm even more curious as to why the brood is split up, I don't think they're thinking of bringing the rest into the fake nest because the ants work fast.

[SNiDE]

Hi Frogger, any update on this colony?

[Frogger1]

Hello,

The colony is still doing very well, before the weather got really cold they were foraging daily, eating everything I could give them, but with how cold it is now the colony has been pretty quiet for the last month or two. However in the last few days they look to be becoming a bit more active, taking small bits of food but nowhere near the amount of food they were eating a while ago. Due to the cold weather they moved the brood to the back of the setup where I can't see, so when the weather gets warmer again I'm hoping they'll move back to the front.