The Story of my Camponotus Hyatti Colony 12/2/2018
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 the feral ants created or wrapped her in, which made it very hard for her to move. Over the next few days, I carefully held the queen down with a q-tip and proceeded to remove as much of the web as I could. Slowly, she started to move around more and more. About a week into her recovery, she was able to start to groom herself again, and she managed to remove all of the remaining web.
After continued feeding for almost a month, she finally laid some eggs again. I knew that she would have a very hard time bringing them up to workers though, as her food reserves had been depleted while caring for her original batch of workers. She needed help, in the form of worker ants. I then tried to give her a pupa from another colony of the same species (though with a different color morph). She killed it and ate it. I decided not to risk any more boosting failures, and tried to take another route, introducing an adult worker ant. I asked my cousin for a worker from his colony, which he bought and was doing better than my solo queen. He graciously donated one of his colony's workers to me.
I then proceeded to isolate the worker for about a week. This removed any of it's old colony scent, which made the chances of the queen accepting it much higher. I also fed both the queen and this worker plenty of food in order to make sure that they wouldn't see each other as food due to starvation. The last step of the introduction was to chill both of the ants in the fridge, in order to make them slower and less aggressive. My hope was that if they stayed docile long enough, the queen would have her colony scent spread to the worker, prompting it's acceptance into her new colony.
After about 5 minutes in the fridge, I carefully moved the worker into the queen's test tube, and let them chill for another 2 minutes. Upon removal, both ants were moving quite slowly, showing no signs of aggression. The next day, I checked up on them and to my pleasant surprise, the worker was sitting right next to the queen, and had been accepted! Unfortunately, the queen ate the eggs she laid, possibly due to them being damaged in the refrigeration process. Luckily though, she laid a fresh new batch a few days later. I tried adding some pupae from a mature colony of a similar Camponotus species to make up for the loss of her initial brood, which you can see in the video below. Unfortunately most of them turned out to be infertile queens and males, which I removed from her colony later. The one worker that came from the boost was killed later on by the queen. Although this was a setback to this colony's progress, I continued caring for them and making sure they had everything they needed to grow into a successful colony.
Fast forward a few months, and she now has two of her own biological workers, along with two larvae. The original boost worker died due to unknown causes shortly after the queen's first biological worker was born. Still, that one worker gave the queen a chance to live, and she succeeded in helping the nearly dead queen make a full recovery. They are now going into hibernation, and when spring comes, should start back up and grow into a large healthy colony.
I am so glad that this queen was saved from this disaster, and this goes to show how resilient insects can be. Going from near death, to having a growing colony, this queen persevered, which makes this colony one of my absolute favorites.
Thank you for reading!
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 the feral ants created or wrapped her in, which made it very hard for her to move. Over the next few days, I carefully held the queen down with a q-tip and proceeded to remove as much of the web as I could. Slowly, she started to move around more and more. About a week into her recovery, she was able to start to groom herself again, and she managed to remove all of the remaining web.
After continued feeding for almost a month, she finally laid some eggs again. I knew that she would have a very hard time bringing them up to workers though, as her food reserves had been depleted while caring for her original batch of workers. She needed help, in the form of worker ants. I then tried to give her a pupa from another colony of the same species (though with a different color morph). She killed it and ate it. I decided not to risk any more boosting failures, and tried to take another route, introducing an adult worker ant. I asked my cousin for a worker from his colony, which he bought and was doing better than my solo queen. He graciously donated one of his colony's workers to me.
I then proceeded to isolate the worker for about a week. This removed any of it's old colony scent, which made the chances of the queen accepting it much higher. I also fed both the queen and this worker plenty of food in order to make sure that they wouldn't see each other as food due to starvation. The last step of the introduction was to chill both of the ants in the fridge, in order to make them slower and less aggressive. My hope was that if they stayed docile long enough, the queen would have her colony scent spread to the worker, prompting it's acceptance into her new colony.
After about 5 minutes in the fridge, I carefully moved the worker into the queen's test tube, and let them chill for another 2 minutes. Upon removal, both ants were moving quite slowly, showing no signs of aggression. The next day, I checked up on them and to my pleasant surprise, the worker was sitting right next to the queen, and had been accepted! Unfortunately, the queen ate the eggs she laid, possibly due to them being damaged in the refrigeration process. Luckily though, she laid a fresh new batch a few days later. I tried adding some pupae from a mature colony of a similar Camponotus species to make up for the loss of her initial brood, which you can see in the video below. Unfortunately most of them turned out to be infertile queens and males, which I removed from her colony later. The one worker that came from the boost was killed later on by the queen. Although this was a setback to this colony's progress, I continued caring for them and making sure they had everything they needed to grow into a successful colony.
Fast forward a few months, and she now has two of her own biological workers, along with two larvae. The original boost worker died due to unknown causes shortly after the queen's first biological worker was born. Still, that one worker gave the queen a chance to live, and she succeeded in helping the nearly dead queen make a full recovery. They are now going into hibernation, and when spring comes, should start back up and grow into a large healthy colony.
I am so glad that this queen was saved from this disaster, and this goes to show how resilient insects can be. Going from near death, to having a growing colony, this queen persevered, which makes this colony one of my absolute favorites.
Thank you for reading!
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