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Date Journal Entry
2001.07.10.23.17 Wow how the time passes.. Have struggled at times cursed but generally really like this species. In the past month I took the new terrarium the actual one made in the step-by-step wood terrarium pages on this site. If you look at the bottom you ll see the older one. The new one is about 14x11.5x3/8 old one was 8.5x11x5/16 . They have pretty much occupied almost all of it. The queen is massively FAT. Probably as fat as when I first caught her. I estimate worker count now in the 2-3K range. If I can keep them from escaping I m hoping to make 5K here soon. I see no alates. So either that large one turned into a huge female worker or it died/workers ate it or just hasn t been spied. Even so it was NOT as large as the queen. Anyway I have found someone in chat who seems to have had great success. I m learning a lot about food and ant colonies. I think we really don t comprehend how many insects a colony eats... I hope to write some good articles on colony care soon but for now I simply makes notes of this colony. Today I fed them 1/2 a raw walnut seed from yard last year and kept in water also same amount of seed of finely chopped raw shrimp. I also gave them about .1-.3ml of maple syrup/water. This has seemed to calm them down and make them happier after the move. This colony has eaten white rice cooked hamburger 50 fruit flies every couple days. Oh yeah also two chopped crickets. They are just pulling everything in and munching down. Now I know why the queen is so fat. I also am going to try to add a second terrarium at some point. Anyway will try to add entries on this colony weekly possibly daily from here on out. Will try to get some decent pictures tomorrow i ll be cooler . Total worker count is about 2-3K. Queen is about to enter 4th egg laying phase of the year. The end of the pupae from this years brood 2 are hatching . The eggs laid from brood cycle 3 of this year are pretty much larvae of various stages. Queen should be at egg laying peak of brood cycle 4 here shortly.
2001.06.19.23.26 Finally sitting doing some fun er things.. : I have to report whatever species this is it is absolutely great. While I do have problems with them endeavoring to escape - they love the wood matrix style terrariums http://www.antcam.com/antfarm/howtobuild/wood So here s the news. The transfer to the wood terrarium went well I have pictures . With the escape and war with the Formica Nitridiventus they took casualties - not sure how many. It was a dent - 10 perhaps. Also it took a while for them to take to and adapt their new home but for some reason with the increase in temperature this colony has become super-active The number of foragers in the foraging area is roughly 25-75 at any given time. They swarm and consume take into their tube nice bite sized bits of chopped mealworms or what I m finding most of my ants absolutely LOVE.. RAW SHRIMP. I use the little clippers or simply freeze the shirmp and carve off thin slices - which I then break into bits trying to keep them cold which I toss into the terrarium. If I m feeling particularly nursive I sat and cut and gave them 1 piece at a time bits at least 3-5x their weight/volume. This species really liked those - they just consumed them and left these shriveled up remnants.. I figure this colony is working on it s third brood currently. I suspect the number of pupae which is making it per brood is roughly 150-300.. Also current news I took pictures so they will eventually appear here. But I saw a pupae which was of an aleate winged virgin queen . I only saw one which a few workers were giving attention to. It seems this pupae has been merged with one of the larger pupae piles making it now impossible for me to find this. But I do have pictures so I can prove it. Hence while I did not raise this colony from scratch if it starts producing aleates then once I have it identified I can publish the specs of what they need to be successful. This colony clearly wants a larger terrarium. I m working on one for a New Zealand museum based on the same wood designs used in my step-by-step directions. The final thing I m messing with on the process described on that page is how to seal the thing to escapees when the workers are very small - but secondly to allow enough air to move through the terrarium that the ants can live reasonably in it. We shall see if my current experiment will work. Right now I m messing with acrylic and the outer wood frame and finding that it might be easier than I think to make the outer frames seal. The final step to first build up acrylic finish on the wood frame elements - this is particularly useful if you cut the framing notches a bit wide they ideally should be very close . This way one creates a nice solid acrylic glue seal as well as flat surfaces on the glass. The final step is to put wax on the glass surfaces where the glass mates with the outer wood frame element. Carefully load up with polyacrylic the frame elements. Top first. Once you have top loaded up not so much it will drip BTW you put the side of glass with layer of wax on to the liquid acrylic - some will smoosh out sides but the less the better. I did about 5-8 layers of acrylic on my wood even before doing this final step in a attempt to level the beams - finally just gave up for something better matching the glass. I figure it will take at least 24 hours to cure but once cured I can do a final light bake and should be able to easily remove the glass the wax creates a oily layer the poly acrylic doesn t bond well to . For anything oil based you would use soap on the glass. just apply it like you would apply crayon to paper. : Once whatever you have decided to seal with is hard and I mean hard - with polyacrylic the liquid turns completely clear - no cloudy areas should be left . One should then be able to seperate the glass make sure you mark positions on glass relative to frame. If any holes need to be patched I will patch them let seal just one more time Pressing quite hard Then what I will need to deal with after is having not 2 but actually 4 tubes two for chaining but the other two one for air flow the second to allow moisture to be put in the terrarium. Anyway final note is that whatever species of myrmicinae I have they are really doing well. Other notes. I ve been feeding all kinds of chopped up insects - moths caterpillars things eating my broccoli - green little things . Also am applying at least 10ml water to interior of colony through outer wood/glass the ants are defaintely endeavoring to tunnel out. They have escaped at least twice. The last time two days ago I counted at least 200 - and it was probably 400 workers I picked up by hand one or two at a time to plop back into their area. I plugged the hole they had managed between wood and glass to escape with cotton - but this lifts the glass making available more places the workers can wiggle through. The ants definately know where there is air circulation as well as water circulation in their space.. The combination of water/air stimulates the ants to endeavor to enlarge their space into those areas where there is constant innundation of water then drying water drying - i.e. ROT. They know it - and I need to get this colony moved each day I am checking edges to see if they have escaped again. So far so good - new much better sealed terrariums should be done in a few days. One of them will be for me - the other for New Zealand museum which said they have monorium antarticus. We ll have new pictures and more information - if my myrmicinae don t like the new space lack of ventilation - or whether they do as well as the monorium. Then I may finally have figured out the good relative sizes of things for various species to have successful colonies produce aleates . Which is what all of us ant watchers want. :
2001.05.09.21.15 It s been a really long time. I had a hard time with my myrmicinae tunnelling into the plaster terrariums escaping etc. Basically I had to design and construct a completely new terrarium. Now that the ant emergencies are cooling down a bit I m hoping that I can put up the plans. But while I probably have lost maybe 20 of the workers due to the above the colony is now starting to do really well. I took pictures today of the queen again - and I have some nice ones which show how swollen she is. She is definately laying eggs. I will post them as soon as I get time to go through images. I ve mostly been feeding fruit pieces chopped meal worms which they really like . But their main course was when they found my formica Nitrodiventus. They absolutely devistated that colony. I gave them the dead to consume which they were happy to do. I believe what is triggering the reproductive cycles in all of my colonies is the spring warming + sun access from a west window - I just have to be careful not to allow direct exposure. I believe this in conjunction with the formica dead bodies is causing the myrmicinae to go into a full reproducitve cycle.
2001.03.11.12.19 Well they are still on front porch. I did get to see the queen yesterday. I think the ants are getting ready to move so I need to get a new terrarium done for them - they don t like the one I have on there now for them to move into. worker count is roughly 500-1000 - they have a fair number of large larvae. I havn t been feeding them at all since I mostly wanted them in stasis till I could deal with getting them moved. I have them on front porch so they get a bit of daily warming variation so I ll have to get this done soon. Mostly working on new wood terrarium designs which are coming along well.
2001.03.03.15.26 Just starting my journal on this colony I captured last year. They really did well - getting nice images was difficult. I know I had the queen. But this colony late last year and into the winter began burrowing into the plaster - now I m having a horrible time getting them to move out. : Right now I put them on my front porch where it s cool to slow them down to give myself time to figure out what to do.