ANTSTORE World of Ants

[SteveUK28]

lol messorus They prob was.. im in the process of trying to move them now wish me luck lol

[amrik singh]

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 .

[Zagone]

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 hesperius 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.

[amrik singh]

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 .

[amrik singh]

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.

[damondeionno]

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.

[amrik singh]

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.

[miszt]

Great pics Jimmy

[amrik singh]

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 .

[amrik singh]

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.

[JimmyVe]

Good news amrik, seems they are doing good. If you have pictures don't forget to post them.

[amrik singh]

Hi,
Since the 8 of june the colony have increase about three fold in size .The Pheidole p.are really crazy about
poppy seeds : They harvest quickly every poppy seeds I give, hungry or not , but don't like at all sesame and mustard seeds . I know that Tetramorium like much clover seeds also and they are small enough for Pheydole p.but these seeds are not for human consumption so maybe they are treated so I prefer not to take the risk. Pheidole p. and Tetramorium c. are not so much interested in honey or sugar when they have the choice so I feed them almost exclusively insects (with some spiders) and seeds .

[amrik singh]

I did not participate to this forum for very long time because I was busy and I did not have any thing very
useful to say. I am also very ashame to have to tell that my colony of Pheidole have escape probably between the mosquito net and the window frame . For that it had to go out passing on the fluon down the table ,on the floor and up the wall to the window. I had well seen two or three Pheidoles on the table but I did not worry to much because with other ants it was without consequence. Now the colony have completely dissipare ,I could not find it. It is probably in the roof or the ouside wall of the house or died out during last cold winter. This summer I had to give away all of my ants because I could not find somebody to look after properly when I was in India .Now I limit myself to two collony of Tetramorium caespitum because it is easy to look after for somebody when I am away ( and they are very interesting ants to observed ).

[amrik singh]

Hi everybody,
In Belgium, in a limited area of warm micro-climate, rocky slopes expose full south, you can find some Mediteranean ants: Messor structor, Plagiolepis sp. ,Camponotus sp an so on. But Pheidole pallidula have never been found in natural free colony in this country(that can change with time if global warming continue). So when I found a flourishing dark red Pheidole pallidula colony in the pavement on the full south ,sun exposed side of my house I got very exited . At first I thought it was Tetramorium impurum but their fast movements , shiny head and a few minutes later the sight of a soldier make me understand : It was the colony that escaped nearly one and a half year ago. To arrive there it had to move a total of 17 to 21 meters from the artificial nest on the other side of the house.
It is also the occasion of a interesting discovery : My Pheidole 's were yellow , these are very dark red ! It prove that the big color differences in Pheidole pallidula colony's is the result of climatic (or maybe food ) differences and not of "variety" differences.
I am very happy to be able to observe this colony in natural conditions and I am not worry because it is a European specie and it's absence from Belgium is only due to climatic gradients. In my area there is no natural warm micro-climate only south exposed pavements.

[amrik singh]

The main entrance of the Pheidole nest is a few centimeters from a nest of Lasius flavius but I did not observed any aggressive interactions even when the Lasius flavius swarming did take place they avoid each other entrance area. The Pheidoles seems very efficient foraging ,many foragers are coming back carrying preys alone or in group.