I finally captured a live mated queen!

[Dominus]

So, last year we released them all into the wild. This year I kinda missed the ants. Last month, while cleaning the utility room we found a queen ant just crawling around. Must be a newly mated queen. We caught her and put her in a test tube.

For those that don't know, the test tube simulates perfectly a founding chamber. What a newly mated queen ant does is find a little space somewhere and fully enclosed herself in there to begin laying eggs.

Well, it only took half a day inside the test tube for her to start laying eggs. It took about a month for the eggs to hatch into nanitics, which are the first generation of workers ants.

Last week I attached the test tube to a little glass box as an outworld. It's where they will go to collect resources.

Anyway, here are a couple of pictures.

You cannot see them all but there are currently 7 nanitics. 6 are helping the queen care for the eggs while there is 1 that wanders around looking for resources.



Here is the one that gathers resources and go back to the founding chamber to feed the others, including the queen. In this picture, this nanitic is drinking the honey I put in there for them.


As you can see, I also put in crushed insects for them. No live insects. I don't want any chance of the ants getting hurt.

Here is a zoomed out view of the setup.


We got 4 dogs and 3 cats. We don't want any chance of this setup getting messed up by the dogs or cats. So, we got the whole thing inside a bigger glass enclosure.

 

[cityboy-stl]

Interesting. Are you raising a whole new ant hill? I guess that's you call it.

 

[Petallways]

Yes. Black carpenter ant. They are very common around here.

It’s so cool that you’re helping her!

 

[Dominus]

Interesting. Are you raising a whole new ant hill? I guess that's you call it.

Trying to. Goal is from 0 workers to thousands. It's actually interesting to watch how they grow.