Bay Area Ants

     In the last few days of October as well as the first weeks of  November, a friend and I caught multiple queens of the species Pogonomyrmex subdentatus.  I managed to get 3 successful colonies going out of the four queens I got, as well as one queen that is alive but worker-less. I will make a post about my colonies in the near future. Since a 75% is a relatively good rate of success for this species, I decided to make a detailed care sheet about how I did it. Enjoy! Scientific Name:  Pognomyrmex subdentatus Common Name: Red Havester Ant, California Harvester Ant Distribution:   Found in areas Northern California Queen size:   6-9mm (queen size can vary greatly) Worker size:   4-7mm (nanitics can be much smaller than a mature colony's workers). Only one worker caste but workers can vary in size due to factors such as colony age and it's nutrition in the larval stages. Natural Habitat: Chaparral environments, ofte...

A while back, my cousin and I went on a road trip to Southern California. While we were there, we purchased some ant colonies. One of them is this Myrmecocystus navaio colony, with upwards of 10 workers. These ants are honeypot ants (more on those here ) When we got this colony, they were in a simple test tube and outworld setup. I moved them into a custom made formicarium, which they liked. Unfortunately, while I was on vacation they ran out of water and workers started to die. Eggs were not being laid and brood (young) within the colony was running out. I decided then to move this colony into a dirt setup, as most of the colonies I put in them recover and/or flourish in them. I had an old dirt box formicarium that I purchased a while back, so I decided to clean it out and replace the substrate with some fresh dirt I collected while out looking for ant queens. Within a few days they had dug their nest, and both repletes had gotten inside without any injuries. Unfortunately, one of...

     This spring, I caught a large number of Camponotus queens. Most of the varieties that I caught were numerous, except this one. This color morph of Camponotus hyatti  is one that I have been wanting ever since I started to keep ants. I was lucky enough to catch one of them during their nuptial flights.      All was going well, and the queen was one of the first out of all the Camponotus  I caught to get her first workers, or nanitics. Right after the first one eclosed (hatched out of it's cocoon), disaster struck. A feral colony of Tapinoma sessile  (also called the odorous house ant), invaded my ant room. They killed another colony of mine completely, and nearly killed this queen. Her worker was dead and her brood was being carried away by the feral ants to be used as food.      All I managed to recover from this tragedy was the queen, crippled and barely alive. Her legs were mangled by some sort of web like substance ...