Introduction: 50 year old Nerd's 1st Ant Colony (Lasius Niger)

Hello fellow Formicarians,

So I got interested in Ants, watched a hundred youtube tutorials and read a lot of articles...
After that I ordered what I think I need the 1st year or more...

The package will probably arrive somewhere after next weekend...
A good time to start a Journal to keep track of all things happening.

So what did I order that's being delivered somewhere next week ?

For starters I ordered a Ant colony of Lasius Niger with 12-20 (nanitics) worker ants.

- Honeydew surrogate
- cottonwool
- extra tubes 1 meter 10mm
- exta endcaps
- a very small 1st nest with only 2 chambers + sponge
- a few water drippers
- some protein jelly cups
- 1 feedig 'fountain'
- insect tweezer set
- brushes
- Fluon
- 10 extra tubes to catch the same species when they fly end of lujy here in the netherlands.
- some tube splitters y and x and T shapes
- tube connection parts

anthouse-acri-king-9x5x13cm-acrylic-anth

The nest:

Lasius-niger-1-MierenNederland.nl_-scale

The Lasius Niger Ants:

Perhaps I over did it since the ants won't need much more then a tube or two the 1st few months.
But better to have stuff in stock when sarting this new hobby seriously

Any tips and tricks on stuff I missing out on are welcome !

See you in the next post when the order is in

Greetz,
Peter Lunk
Velsen, Netherlands

Comments

Lasius Niger Nuptual flight was today in Netherlands, Velsen.

Just now an hour ago many Queens landed all over the backyard... I caught 4 in Test-tube setups.

Learning more about ants: Anatomy

A pretty detailed anatomy page can be found here: Mississippi Entomological Museum Below is image with more basic schematic overview: Source: Wikipedia More will be added over time...

First picture of the Lasisus Niger colony.

I had a quick 1st look at the Lasius Niger starter colony today. They were exposed to light for only 20 seconds and did not get very aroused. Perhaps because they've filled up on sugars overnight. So here is the first picture of my Lasius Niger starter colony. This is the Gyne (Queen) with about 12 nanites (1st brood worker ants). As far as I could see there are 2 dead nanites in there and I do not see any 2nd brood. Perhaps my untrained 50 year old eyes are missing something so let me know if you see any brood or eggs. As you can see the cotton-wool in the test tube they arrived in has become a bit funky. They will need to be moved to the small nest or another basic setup test-tube soon. Before I do that I have fed them a juicy freshly swatted fly which I cut in half with a razor-blade for easy access to the juicy parts. I'll let them gorge on that for a few hours before using the light/dark method to enthuse them to move.

Lunk's Formicariums

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