Ant Farm Project - #05 - End of Winter Rest and New Setup

Hello lovely Hiveans !

I already showed in previous posts how we prepared a nest and an arena for our ant colony and how they evolved in the first month. After that, the colony went into the winter rest. Now that we were also moving and relocating from Germany, we had to build the whole setup again and also to prepare a new reagent glass for that purpose. We also decided that this is a good moment to wake them up from the winter rest permanently, as the colony will be exposed to some stress anyway for several times during their own relocation. Here I will show you what we did .. 🐜🐜🐜

After the Winter Rest

For the transport of the colony we used a new and fresh reagent glass. This was prepared in the same way as we did it before, and as I already showed in previous posts, so I just summarize it here. There was fresh drinking water at the end of the glass, separated by a lump of wool. Inside the glass were some grains as travel nutrition. The exit was stuffed by another lump of wool, so that no ant is able to escape the glass. Of course, the glass was permanently covered by a light shield, so that the colony was not exposed to light during the journey.

After we removed the light shield at our new home place, we could finally peek inside to check the situation and status of the colony. Luckily, the queen was well up, which was our biggest concern. Unfortunately, there were only eight small workers left. The other worker ants died during the winter rest, especially the bigger ones, but there is always a loss to be counted in during this resting period. In our case we had left not less then 50%, so we were quite happy about it. The food of the colony nearly ran out and there was already a lot of trash inside the glass. But now, that they are connected to a proper arena again, they can bring out the trash and collect some more grains for their new colony grow during this year.

Overall, I can say that our actual colony size starts from where we initially began their hosting a few months ago. But we were able to get used to their needs and were able to get through the first winter rest. As they are still a very tiny colony, they will stay in the reagent glass, so we will keep the gypsum nest unplugged for even longer now.

The New Setup

As described, the ant colony is very small und thus still living in a reagent glass as their home nest. This flask was also a new one, with a water reservoir at the end of the tube. But as you can see, the water reservoir is quite large. We hope that, once the colony grows, the lack in space will motivate them to move into their future gypsum nest faster. The reagent glasses are a good home for them, but the gypsum nest, that I showed once in a previous post, is just more appealing for us and enables us to watch the colony at work and in their behaviour later on. In addition, we are still using the small arena. We prepared it the same way again as described in the previous posts, but this time we added a little branch that they can climb and balance over.

One addition, that is completely new, is the additional chamber that we connected via a Y-shaped adapter. This was actually used to connect the relocated colony to the new setup, but has some other nice purposes in the future too. On one hand, we can offer some proteins in the in this seperated tiny arena or other experimental food sources, that can be removed far easier and with less disturbances. On the other hand, we have a transfer gate that may be used by the Queen too. Do you remember that the ants will close their entrance to the arena with stones very fast? But this route here to the tiny arena will always stay open and enables the queen too get out of the regent glass and move somewhere else easily. This will show super important one day and grants far more flexibility to us. We learned from our first settlement ^^

Besides the little branch that we added to the arena environment, we decided to store the grains for the ants in a little glass bottle. This makes it easier for us to refill it and it is also a bit more of a challenge to the worker ants. Probably not yet, but we like to experiment with the interior in the future, especially with the position and the routes to the food sources.

Now that I showed you the setup and gave some explanations, lets come to the visually more interesting part, the moving in of the colony .. 🐜🐜🐜

The Moving In of the Colony

I took not very long until the worker ants started to roam through the new setup and discovered all its corners. Unfortunately, the queen did not want to move out so willingly. Thus, also not the best thing to do, we removed the light shield to motivat her a bit. 10 minutes later she finally decided to get out and we directly unplugged the transportation glass from the trasfer arena.

Actually we hoped that the queen will directly move to the new reagent glass, but insetead she moved into the arena. Thereby, she was constantly accompanied by some workers that guided her. Later on we saw where seh was guided, namely to the grains that were placed inside the glass bottle.We should have seen i coming, but we believed that she would have preferred the lighed shielded reagent glass. Now we know it better. Females love food. Thats what motivates them and makes them happy, I guess, and a little but important wisdom for all you men out there 😂

It was also quite interesting that after a while the whole colony settled directly next to the food source. They did not move away from there, so we decided at one point that we insert the queen into the transfer arena again. This time, after a first meal and some fresh water from the water reservoir in the arena, she decided to move into the reagent glass.

The whole process was a lot of fun to watch, far better than any movie could possibly be, especially for my son. We are also super lucky that the colony found her new home. At the moment we placed then in our bedroom in our huge sideboard, where we will grant them a whole week of rest and time to get used to the new enviroment. I hope that they will evolve in a good way and in time, I will give you a new update 😉

A Macroshot of the Queen

Of course I took the opportunity to take many pictures. I already showed to you the important one for this part of my Ant Farm Project documentary, but I promised @chrislybear, the biggest fan of this project, to make a special macro picture of the queen whenever I have the opportunity .. and here is my best shot of a Messor Barbarus Queen ! One thing that is clearly visible is the huge different in size. The queen is enoureous in comparison to the worker ants. But keep in mind that these two here are only the smaller variant and with time there will be some workers that are about 30% larger in size. In general, Messor Barbarus are relatively large ants in the world of ants in general. The queen has a black body and a nice reddish head. Unfortunately the colour does not come out here quite well.

I still need a new camera for better pictures, not only for ants and nature macros, but also for the wonderful landscapes of the little paradise that we were moving in. I already had extended talks with @qwerrie an awesome photographer and nature-lover, about great options a while ago, but so much happend in the last months, that I was still not able to organise myself a proper one. But when my new work will start next month and my first, or second, payment will arrive, I will finally get one .. 📷.. 📸 .. 😁

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Previous Editions

• #01 - The Nest and Arena
• #02 - Preparing and Connecting the Farm
• #03 - Connecting the Colony to the Farm
• #04 - 28 Days Later

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_{All pictures were taken by myself, ©@adalger, with a Xiaomi Redmi Mobile Phone.}

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Best wishes,
Adalger