Catching up on my ant adventures!

Seeing as though I'm beginning to have trouble remembering all of the dates, I figured it was blog time!

08/10/11
I went outside with the kids (lovely sunny and warm day, and had been raining a bit over the previous week or two) and was very excited to find ants on their nuptial flights(last year my daughter and I were looking for queens everywhere, but had no luck). I captured two queens, one with wings and was still attached to her mate (A), and another wingless queen (B), unsure if she has mated. I put both queens into a small plastic container with a tiny drop of honey and a damp cotton wool ball.

10/10/11
A: Moved to a test tube with damp cotton wool ball in the end. Queens wings gone, male (winged) still alive but not overly active.
B: Not much changed.



17/10/11
Excited! Both A and B have started to lay eggs!! Male still alive with A. No one seems to be remotely interested in eating honey droplets.

24/10/11
Photo time :-) First photo is of A, her eggs and her male which still has wings attached. Second photo is of B and her eggs.




12/11/11
A: Male died today. I'm surprised it took so long, as I'd heard they died pretty much straight away after mating. Eggs seem to be increasing in number.
B: More eggs still appearing :-)

Neither seem to be interested in eating still. I'm assuming they are a claustral species, which means that they seal themselves off with their first batch of eggs and don't eat, surviving only on energy stores and the breaking down of their flight muscles as after they remove their wings and no longer need muscles in that area.


13/11/11
I made an 'outworld' for one of my ants (A) today. It was a cheap plastic container with a lid, I melted small air holes with a hot needle in the lid and made a bigger hole for plastic tubing so I could join it to an upright ant farm. I filled the base of it with some sand, dirt, gravel, dried grass, a wet cotton wool ball and a couple of rocks. I covered A's test tube with red cellophane and removed the cotton wool from the end of A's test tube and put it in the outworld. She got very busy moving dirt etc from the outworld to block off the end of the test tube, which pretty much confirms she is from a claustral species.

I've left B and her eggs in the plastic container as I'm interested to see if there will be a difference in the rate of growth etc based on the environment.

14/11/11
More photos :-)
The first photo is of B and her eggs, second is of A filling her test tube with dirt and gravel from her outworld and the third is of what the outworld looks like and also B in her container.