Formica Fun

One of the Formica queens was attacked and killed by her sisters, unfortunately. The two which remain do not show any signs of aggression towards each other, though. I will keep them together.

The colony is flourishing. There are 15 workers now, and lots of larvae. Here you can see them having fun with a  fly I found on my living room.

Shiny little thing

I was lying on my back on a wooden bench yesterday afternoon, and something heavy landed on my Chin. It started moving right away and I instinctively brushed it off and felt huge wings. That made me jump and I thought I was about to get stung by a wasp, but I was pleasantly surprised to look at the grass and see there was a huge queen scurrying along the floor.

Look at how big it is. I think it could be a Camponotus arboreus queen. It is 20mm long, and its head is amazingly huge. It also has a silver metallic shine on the sides of its gaster. One of the most beautiful queens I have come across.

Feeding Festinatus

This is my Camponotus festinatus queen feeding on a small moth larva worm.




The link to the movie in youtube is http://youtu.be/C0z18ZIrCX8

Firstborn

The Formica fusca have had their firstborn, finally. Very nice.

Over the course of three days, there are now 11 workers with the 3 queens. None have ventured outside the nest yet, though, but I'm sure it won't take long. Once they start foraging, this colony will explode I'm sure.

Almost there

I think it is just a matter of a few days now for the first Camponotus rufipes worker to be born. I will have to speed up her nest.

Flowers and more flowers

The Acromyrmex sp. has been working hard in her fungus garden. In just a few days its size has increased almost tenfold.

Here is a close up (as much as my iPhone will allow it) of her putting the yellow petals in the garden. You can see the tiny bits everywhere on top of the fungus.

Blooming garden

The other Acromyrmex has doubled the size of her "surrogate" garden in one day. Pretty impressive. She is always cutting up leaves and tending to it, it's cool to watch her on her hourly chopping chores :)

Not much change

My Acromyrmex octospinosus has not changed much. Her garden has grown a little, and she made a small hole in the middle.

Dormant

My Camponotus ligniperdus are still hybernating. They won't eat anything and there is hardly any movement at all. I guess they will be like this for another month.

Fire Ant

I captured a queen, some brood and two dozen workers of a Solenopsis invicta colony last weekend. The queen is about 3mm big and the workers are about 1mm big.

They are interesting to watch and are quite aggressive, but I am not sure I will be keeping it, though. The ants are much too small.

Early Christmas Gift

Besides the Acromyrmex cf. octospinosis, I have chosen to keep one of the queens I was able to collect of another Acromyrmex species. These queens are a bit bigger than the octospinosis, and have a darker color too.

I left the queen I kept for a week to check if she would start her garden on her own. I have checked on her every morning. This morning I noticed that although she still had not developed any fungus, she already had a big pile of eggs on top of a leaf. This made me scrap my plan of waiting and act, so I got a tiny bit of fungus (about a tenth) of the octospinosis' garden. As soon as I popped the bit of fungus in, she rushed to spread her eggs in it and started furiously cutting up tiny bits of leaves to feed the fungus with. So maybe all she needed was this small jumpstart :)

Rapid growth

The Formica already have pupae. That is fast indeed.

Here's the link on youtube for the video: http://youtu.be/afgQIIcGy7I

Not quite dead

This is my Camponotus cruentatus queen, still in the test tube. Here she finds out that the centipede I gave her is not quite dead :)

Here's the youtube link for the same video: http://youtu.be/GQaPPbRY90Y

New temporary home

Finally, I was able to move my Camponotus rufipes to a new temporary home. Now that she has a bit of wood on top of her, she seems to be happier and less edgy.

In the YTONG nest

The Camponotus festinatus went inside the ytong nest after a few minutes. She seems to be pretty happy in there.

This is the nest setup:

All that remains to be done is for a forage box to be added, which I will do as soon as she has her first worker out.

Beautiful festinatus (fragilis)

Yesterday I received a queen of Camponotus festinatus (also known as Camponotus fragilis) from a friend. I wanted one of these very much, they are really beautiful. My queen is no exception to this rule:

Isn't she lovely?

Small leaf cutters

My small leaf cutter queens have arrived.

Those three I will send to friends. They all have a good sized ball of fungus growing already. This is the one I will keep for myself:

I believe them to be Acromyrmex cf. octospinosus.

Fertile Formica

The Formica fusca triad are doing fine. The queens constantly groom each other and have laid quite a big pile of eggs:

I hope their relationship is a lasting one :)