ANTSTORE World of Ants

[JimmyVe]

it better for her to rest than to eat here brood.

Nice, i hope it will hatch soon.

[Varban]

I am happy to report that the 2nd puppae emerged as worker! Which is a personal best for the queen since so far every time a 2nd worker is about to emerge the 1st worker dies unexpectedly. So yeah 2 workers now wohooo none of the eggs has turned into larvae yet so that means it will be another good 45 days for more to come

[JimmyVe]

If the workers take care off the queen now i think she will last the next 45 days without eating her brood.

[Varban]

Hehe from your mouth to my queen's ears Jimmy

[Varban]

Figured i should post an update on how things are going.

The queen is still alive and so are the 2 workers.
The batch of eggs has turned into larvae of different shapes and sizes. When i was checking the tube today i even noticed one of the large larvae move its head. It moved it twice and one worker came and picked it up.

There is still water in the tube about 1/3 left, i've seen the queen a few times press her head against the cotton, i assume to drink.

I made some adjustments to the farm i filled a 2nd test tube and its burried. It will me farm water source. There is very little space just enough for a bunch of ants to enter it. The tube is half the diameter of the test tube of the queen so it fits niceley and is nicely camouflaged.

Food wise things are going ok now too. The workers didn't forage not even at night. So i put some dandelion and grass seeds inside the tube at the entrance. The next day two things happened. They had picked out all the dandelion seeds and moved them all the way inside the tube where the larvae are and had covered the grass seeds with dirt. Guess i know which type they prefer now .

Since they don't forage i had to adapt my sugar water supply too. I used skippy's technique and put a small pot of sugar water in the test tube. Haven't seen the queen go try it yet. We will see.

I don't think anything has been eaten, brood wise, but then again I can only notice when they are is a significant decrease in larvaes or eggs. So far so good.

Also interesting thing. The queen lays eggs in cycles. I mean thats how it has worked out for now. She laid the first batch and stopped laying, of course she ate them all. Then came the 2nd batch where 2 workers managed to be born, the rest was eaten and now the 3rd batch is developing. I have no new eggs just about 10 larvae and hopefully none will be eaten. She used to eat her brood mainly at the puppae stage so i am still not out of danger. Still it is interesting, i thought they just kept laying and laying

Wonder what determines how many eggs per cycle she lays.

Also when the workers clean her she totally stops moving. It's like watching a carwash. Both workers go around her and on her and when they are done she resumes movement

[JimmyVe]

Great story, nice to hear the colony is taking off now.

[Varban]

Figure I should give a quick update on things.

The 3rd cycle is almost over and all things were good. From 2 workers I have 5 and 1 more is in the process of coming to life so by tonight it will be 6.

I've had 2 near death experiences and by I i mean two workers. They sort of drowned in the sugar/water. Still even though they were not moving whatsoever, must have been in it for a while, I took them out and well 10 mins they were back to life. Which was cool.

Other than that they love their dandelion seeds, although every so often the damn cotton wool leaks and well i have dandelions growing in the test tube. Weird. I haven't given sugar/water in two weeks since the 2nd drowning incident and they only survive on dandelion seeds for the moment. All seems good.

[mpir]

@Verban

You know I keep M barbarus too. Since I got them (sometime in March) I haven´t feed them with shugar/honey water not once. I was advized not to feed them with that. Only seeds and plain water and ofcourse some bug every once in a while. And so far they are doing great.

I´m still waiting for that big pupae to hatch. It is almost a month now since I first noticed it and it is still a pupae. I guess bigger ants take more time to develop.

But I think that you are out of the worst now. There are workers who will take care of the queen. Now the colony will grow in numbers fast.

[JimmyVe]

Looks like it turns out well for you colony Varban, nice.

@mpir: In deed, larger ants take more time to hatch. You can see it with every species that have majors, they all need more time to hatch.

I also have Messor barbarus, i used to give them sugar/water but they never thought it so i do not give it to them any more.

[Varban]

Well i have 6 happy workers walking around

[mpir]

Short update on my big pupae...

It finaly hatched 2 days ago. It is really amazing and spectacular. In lenght it is almost as big as the queen but its head is way bigger than the queens. Most of the small ants are as big as its gaster. Really nice add on for the colony.

[Varban]

Wow nice i have a 7th worker. Last one from the current cycle. Next colony expansion wont happe for another 2 months ...

Post a picture!

[Varban]

Hehe this morning I was checking on the colony and well i found the weirdest thing. Well it's not that weird but def funny. My ants and the eggs, larvae and puppae and some food mind you have relocated to the ceiling of the test tube.

Oh yeah this is indeed a plant growing next to the cotton wool ...

Maybe they are playing Hide and Seen with the queen?

[JimmyVe]

the plant growing next to the cotton is not bad, just means they have put the seeds to close to the cotton.

Some species do it all the time, past there brood to the ceiling.

[Varban]

Yeah i know, thought it would be funny to post it though

They seem to rest a lot though.