East Bay Spring Anting (3/29/2021)
Yesterday afternoon, I took a trip to the East Bay area to look for Pogonomyrmex subdentatus queens. This species has their mating flights once in the spring, and once in the fall. It had gotten quite warm in that part of the bay area, with temperatures around 80F. Usually, this is warm enough to trigger their flights, so I left home and arrived at my first location around 1PM. Unfortunately, the first location I checked had plenty of colonies, but did not yield any queen ants. I noticed that it was very hot at this location, likely warmer than what was reported. This made me suspect that the temperature readings in the region were slightly off, and that they might have flown during the previous heatwave. In the future, I will be sure to account for the inaccuracy of the forecasts in this area. Luckily, the second location I visited was in a more hilly area, where the temperatures were noticeably cooler. I suspect that it did no...