New Pachycondyla striata queens

Yesterday I was able to go into the woods and I was fortunate to collect a few Pachycondylas which I believe to be Pachycondyla striata. I collected three solitary female alates, a group of two and a group of four. This is a picture with one of the alates:

I put the group of four in a big plastic shoebox:

They quickly settled in and around a small "house" I built for them of damp cotton wool and a piece of cardboard on top.

Pachycondyla striata queen?

I was coming back from dinner where I work and I saw this huge Pachycondyla walking on the curb alongside the road. Luckily one of my colleagues had a plastic cup and the ant was really happy to go in there because of the Coke drops still in the cup.

I believe it is a queen of Pachycondyla striata (same species as the other I have which is not a queen) because this one is bigger and has scars indicating wings were probably there in the past. Let's wait and see if it will start laying eggs.

Look at how big it is compared to the Lenovo mouse:

Here is a short video of it. I believe the wing scars can be seen (if they are indeed wing scars).

Cleaning up the tube

Well, the test tube was broken and there were so many loose shards inside that I decided the best course of action would be to try and clean it as gently as possible without disturbing the ants. After a small brain-surgery-like operation, the test tube was free of shards (only a very small one which seems to be tangled in the cotton remains. I would not be able to remove it without disturbing the ants directly so I chose to leave it as it is very small), and the cotton wool was dipped in water and squeezed so to make it humid again and put back. I'm quite happy with their new shelter until I get home. :)

Second one from Europe

Today my Lasius flavus arrived from England. It was posted on the 6th October, today is the 28th. She is alive an well, but it was a fluke because the test tube she arrived in is completely smashed in the middle. The bubble wrap is keeping it together. She has around 5 workers with her but they are so tiny I could not take better pictures right now. This is the test tube she arrived in (not much to see, really, as it still has bubble wrap all around):

She seems to be unhurt and the workers are fine, moving about and grooming themselves now and then. She is moving as well and grooming herself quite often. When I get home I will transfer her to the sand nest I have for her and will try to take some pictures. I don't want to open the bubble wrap right now as I am at work and the tube will definitely come apart. I hope she is not too stressed, she is very small but looks really nice :)

New eggs

My Pachycondyla has been having a lot of protein lately (insects) and has two eggs. She had another one but it vanished (I think she might have eaten it, but I'm not sure. They are so small and difficult to see that maybe she had stored it somewhere and I hadn't noticed). Anyway, yesteday I was looking at her feeding and noticed she was carrying something which looked like an egg between her mandibles. When I looked closer I was pretty happy to see not one but two :)

She is storing them in one of the chamber in her plaster nest. They are very small, but I believe you will be able to see them in the pictures.

They are the dirty yellow things, on the first pictures they are bundled together and on the last ones they are separate, close to each other.

Camponotus rufipes

I was in my mother's garden doing some gardening (!) for her and I kicked a piece of rotting branch which was still attached to one of the shrubs and noticed straight away something big scurrying in the grass. I went to look and saw it was a young queen (the very first queen I found in the wild by myself).

It had its wings off already, but I could not find any brood in the wood or on the floor. If there was any, It's gone. No workers either.

I put her in a small plastic pot and tried to feed her some insects, but she has not eaten anything so far.

I am leaving her alone for now and checking on her once a day. I hope she has been fertilized, but she has not layed any eggs so far either. She has water and a honey drop with her.

Moth? No thanks

I put half a moth in for my Pachycondyla. It checked it out and nibbled on it, but wasn't very interested and I had to take it out.

Fish Flakes

I put some fish flakes (which are really high in protein). The ants seem to love it. One of the workers inspected it and started bringing loads inside the nest.

They were nibbling on it a lot, but since there are only two workers they cannot eat fast enough and it went kind of moldy after three days. I had to remove it. I will offer only one or two at a time for now.

Cotton wool

I added some little balls of cotton wool to the forage pot just to see if the ants would interact with them. At night when one of the workers left the test tube, it was interested and started dragging one back.

It did not, however, go back for more. Apparently, one was enough for protection.

Moth larva

I added a live moth larva to the test tube mouth. It started crawling deeper, very slowly. Then the worker "on guard duty" noticed it and approached very carefully. At that point I was expecting it to go bonkers and run back to the queen, but it viciously attacked the larva instead.

That was kind of a surprise, I thought the queen would kill the larva as when the workers are scouting outside the test tube they are wimpy and run off at the slightest disturbance, but inside the test tube it seems they are lions. :)

All that was left by morning was the head of the larva, and an hour later when I went to check it, even that had vanished. I fed them two more larva a day later and they ate that too.

Daughter feeds mom

The workers have been showing a bit more activity yesterday. One is always guarding the queen and eggs, and the other one is frequently going out and looking around. Yesterday I caught one going into the other pot, nosing about.

It found a string of sylicon and started pulling it for a few minutes, then gave up (pictures are quite dark, but you can see it pulling the stringy rubbery sylicon):

It gave up after a few minutes, got some honey, and went back to the test tube to feed mommy :)

New ant

Yesterday I came accross a big ant in my dad's house and I picked it up. I have so far been unable to identify it. It measures about 20 mm, here are some pictures I took this morning:

I also made a short video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcE6iqsUGJk

Whatever this species is, it looks really interesting. I hope this is a queen, or at least a gamergate (if this species allows it) and I hope I can start a colony with it.

I have it in a plaster nest with some sugar and some live termites. It ate some sugar but so far didn't touch the termites (not even any aggressive behaviour towards them yet). Let's see when I get home.

First step out

A few days ago I moved the test tube with the queen and two workers into the forage pot. I think they won't move into the plaster nest for now, there are still only two workers anyway.

This morning, one of the workers decided it was time to do a bit of scouting. I was able to take pictures:

The worker walked around the pot twice, carefully checking everything, but did not go into the hose. It then went back into the test tube and stayed there.

And the queen arrives

Hi there. I bought a queen from a friend here in Brazil, and it arrived yesterday evening (much earlier than I had anticipated). A very beautiful queen with some eggs and two workers. The species is Camponotus ligniperdus. Here she is:

The nest itself is 99% finished. I made a small hole on the side of the main pot, put a plastic transparent hose in it, got another short but wide pot (which I plan to use to put food in) and also made a hole in that, Then glued them with hot sylicon rubber. The results are not pretty but seem to be functional:

The "forage/food pot" has a small hole in the lid so I can lift just that if I want to put things in. The hole is small, though, I don't know how well it will work.

This is what the ant nest setup looks like:

So I went ahead and removed the cotton lump covering the mouth of the test tube the queen had arrived in and set the test tube in the big pot.

One of the workers quickly made its way to the mouth of the test tube, but didn't leave it and went back in. The other worker also made its way there a few moments after the first, and took a bit longer exploring the entrance to the test tube until one of its antennae touched the plaster floor. Then it seems to have gotten scared and ran back to the queen and other worker. I kind of scared them too for a few moments, but then everything went back to normal and they all just stayed there. This happened yesterday evening, as soon as I set the tube in after having opened it.

This morning I went to look again and they were still in the test tube. I put some very small flies (about 4 or 5), as well as a honey/water mixture of about 50% in the forage pot. I left them on my book cupboard in the living room and went to work.

Building my first ant nest

Hi there. This is the ant nest I am building. It is almost done. I'll explain what has been done so far.

First I added plaster powder to a bit of water in a pot and mixed everything for several minutes. I then added more plaster powder in smal amounts until the mixture had the consistency of a tooth paste, mixing all the while. Then I left it to dry for about 24 hours. This is the result:

After 24 hours drying, I got the block off the pot with a bit of pushing and light whacking. It took me about 15 minutes to get it out. This is the plaster block:

Next step would be to carve out the chambers. Since I don't have a queen yet, I thought I might as well just make some "general" chambers. Ok, I'll come clean: I had no idea of what size they should be. Here's me starting off:

After a bit of work, some chambers are created:

 As you can see, you get a lot of leftovers from the carving of just 3 chambers.

After carving out more chambers, it was time to connect them. Again, I had no idea as to how to carve the passages, so I tried to make them about 1 cm in diameter (half a circle). Here's the result:

I then put it back in the plastic pot:

I measured it (sorry about the rule, it is broken in several places but it's the only one I had). You can get an idea of the height in this picture:

On the next two pictures, you can see the size of the biggest chamber (not that big at all but I hope big enough to do the trick):

This is the general size of the passageways:

It looks nice so far, I hope I can get a queen for it soon :)