ANTSTORE World of Ants

[JimmyVe]

Very good news.
If the workers stay long enough without a queen they could accept a new one, but that is hard to tell an always risky.
I would give every queen there own tube, because we ore not sure these species can have more queens in one colony (or do you ?).
It should work out if you give the brood to a new queen.
Good luck.

[melk9]

Very good news.
If the workers stay long enough without a queen they could accept a new one, but that is hard to tell an always risky.
I would give every queen there own tube, because we ore not sure these species can have more queens in one colony (or do you ?).
It should work out if you give the brood to a new queen.
Good luck.

The three queens only were together 'till I arrived at home, when I made the photo, now they are each one in your own little acrylic box, so the first one to lay the eggs will get the brood of the dead queen. The workers will be released in my garden, unfortunally.
I will not take this risk to set a queen with the workers inside the formicary, because I'm sure they will kill the queen!

Hugs

[melk9]

Great news. My queens of this camponotus got eggs. Uhuuuuuuuuuuu!!! Check the photos. They are not so good, but will give you an idea about the situation.

Hugs

[Zagone]

Very good! Excellent news. Hopefully many of them will develope all the way!

[JimmyVe]

Great news. Good luck.

[melk9]

Great, great news. I got the last larvaes of the dead queen and did set inside the little box of the new queen, since it already got its own larvaes and the queen adopted them. ;^) My idea is to get some larvaes of the second queen and give it to the first, since they are very different in colour and size, it will be interesting to see the deveoplment inside the formicary.
Hugs

[melk9]

As I told above, I started an experiment days ago with my camponotus sp. I got some eggs and larvaes from another camponotus bigger, and darker, and I gave them to my queen, the smaller and lighter, and the sp queen adopted the eggs and larvaes, fed them, and now that the adopted workers were born the queen is eating them.What can be the reason? Because the strange feromon of the ants were alive in the larvaes already, so why the queen took good care of the larvaes for eating them right now?

[SteveUK28]

Could be she does not have enough food reserves. Or stress.. Or just she knew they where not hers.. there are many reasons.

[melk9]

Now I belive that she knows the larvaes are not from hers. Check the photo in the blog: Hyperlinks sind nur für registrierte Nutzer sichtbar
But if they are killing the workers new born, why the queen took a good care of them before?
hugs

[JimmyVe]

That is difficult to find out melk. Could be a lot of reasons (like Steve said). Hope she will not do that with her own workers to.

[melk9]

No Jimmy. The workers that are its real brood is developing fine. I have now around seven nurses helping the queen, and they are very confident looking for food in the food box. The black one has as well a nice brood and four workers already helping the queen. I made a very interesting video of the black one moving from the pot to inside the chambers of the formicary... After that nobody will can say that they are not intelligent. I will send it to you once we meet each other in msn.
Hugs

[JimmyVe]

So we can say that the experiment (failed)... the queen eat the strange brood ?

[melk9]

Yes!! But the question still is: Why they didn't eat the eggs and the larvaes, only the ant itself? Because I had set some larvaes and eggs to the blach camponotus and this one ate them in the first second it did notice them.
Hugs

[JimmyVe]

True, that is strange. Dont know...

[melk9]

The colony did grow very fast and the ants are really healthy. I got a lot of termites queens and frost them to give to the ants during the weeks. Actually I already started to give the termites to the ants, and it's interesting to see how powerful is the acid of these ants, because in the end what is left from the flies and termites that the ants eat is a little black powder. I'm as well, giving water+honey+vitamines all mixed and the ants love it. It's interesting to see the orange abdomen completely full... Let's see the benefits of the vitamines. Unfortunally my camera broke, so for while I can't post any images , but I'm going to buy a new one, so, soon you guys will se how beautiful is the camponotus sp colony.
Hugs