ANTSTORE World of Ants

[amrik singh]

Hi,
Yesterday I observed , in the nest a first major or media worker much bigger than other workers , with the gaster well full but it do not go out of the nest yet .
The colony become more actives and bigger ,probably 40 or 60 workers and much brood. The temperature is now 26/ 27° C in the room . I feed them diluted honey and dead insects ,enough honey (bio honey) or maybe sugar seems to be very necessary to these ants for the colony to grow well : When I was giving little honey the
workers were much less active , consumed fewer insect and had less brood . Two or three months ago I give
them a Tenebrion (coleopthere) ,the ants did not attack it except mild and short attacks when it approach the nest entrance or the honey .I left it there because it was eating garbage of the colony , it just die yesterday but the ants don't show any interest .

[amrik singh]

I can not see all the colony at ones because the loam covering still part of the glass in front of the gallery but I thing now there is at least 60 workers and 4 or 5 majors ( or medias , I do not know the specie) much bigger than the minors and with proportionaly larger head . The brood is also much more in number of nymphs and larvae compare with the number of workers.

[amrik singh]

Now the Camponotus have move the nymphs to a place where they are well visible and they are many. The colony is now
also much more active and have now easily 100 workers and , seeing the number of nymphs , will double soon .These ants are not great hunters they seems to feed mostly on sugar rich food and dead or dying insects and spiders at least at this stage of the colony development . They have a hard time catching even small cripple domestic crickets .

[amrik singh]

The colony is now much more active hunting and the foragers are showing much more enthusiasm and succes caching small (around 5 mm to 8mm) crickets. The majors/media are staying in the nest and have the gaster more dilated by food than other workers among the nymphs there are some of apparently even bigger majors.

[Zagone]

Didn't wanna open a new thread jsut to ask this, so I thought I'd borrow this thread abit!

I have a Camponotus species from Laos, who were doing pretty well, tehre we 14 workers when I got them and a queen; but due to some misfortunes with their intended home I had to place them in a temporary container where over time 6 workers died; but a few were still born and their current numbers are up to 20 workers.

Now I've moved them into a new basin, where they nest in a ytong nest. The ground is made up of a layer of filtercotton to contain moisture longer, and then half of the arena is potsoil and the other a red, finegrain sand. Now to the issues...

Firstly, I can't get them to consume any protein. I've tried mealworms, crickets, houseflies, mincedmeat and a boiled egg. They havn't eaten from any of them. They do consume the sugarwater I give them though, so the ants themselves survive. But my nest issue is that due to the lack of protein, none of the larvae live to make a cocoon or become an ant for that matter.

Now, am I doing soemthing wrong? Or do I jsut have to find some specific food for them that they will eat? When I kept them in their old, small container that was dry and didn't ahve any soil or sand at all, they ate both crickets, houshold spiders and other things I gave them. But since I moved them into the new arena they ahvn't touched the food. They attack it abit, but then leave it alone. Could it be that the arena is too moist? It's at around 70% atm.

Thanks for any help in advance.

[JimmyVe]

I think 70% is to much, but i doubt that is the problem why they don't accept the food. Strange that they accept it first. Is there something else that changed when they moved to the new farm ? Heating ?
Is there still brood ?

[Zagone]

Right now they have a bundle of eggs. Heat should be roughly the same, atleast if my thermometer is trustworthy. I'm gonna let the basin dry out now, because the major difference from the old basin is that in the old basin tehre was no sand or soil at all, and it was completely dry. They seemed to accept this. Then I'll just ahve to try and moisten the ytong carefully to not make too much water leak out into the rest of the basin.

The annoying part is that I have to sit and babysit the basin while I dry it, because the ants will surely take the chance to explore the rest of my room.

At one point I actaully tried to give them some extra heat with my heat-cord at their nest, but they rather moved away from it, so I abandoned that right away.

They even seem abit picky about the sugary food now though. They eat it, but it doesn't seem like everyone gets/wants it.

[JimmyVe]

Some Camponotus species like it rather dry. So that could be one of the reasons. Like you said, let the nest area dry for a while and keep it less moist to see how they respond to that.

In my experience small colonies are much more picky about there sugary food than larger ones.

Good luck.

[Zagone]

Thanks Jimmy, wish I had any working fans to help with the drying. >__<

If I do manage to get these to recover, I think I'mma let someone else take care of them. I've decided to somewhat specialize my ant-keeping instead. But first I'mma make sure they survive!