Cale's Camponotus pennsylvanicus colony

[Cale3459]

I rescued this colony as we were moving some stuff and redoing my driveway. The colony was displaced by the digging and resurfacing and I was able to capture the queen and around 20 workers. Unfortunately, due to stress or just the fact that it was time for those particular ants, my numbers dropped to 15 just before hibernation. She laid a few eggs right before winter, and due to high temperatures locally I brought them out of hibernation about 2 weeks ago. I've been feeding a steady diet of crickets, apples, honey, sugar water, and regular water and I noticed that some of my eggs have hatched and moved on to the larval stage including one particularly fat one. I'm down to 13 workers now and hoping she is able to produce enough eggs to counter the drop off in workers and begin growing the numbers in the colony again.

(Also incredibly impressed with my iPhone camera )

[Fulkol]

Nice pictures I think a single queen should be able to start a colony with as low as just a few workers to do the basic food foraging needed for the queen and larvae growth so you should be fine.

[Cale3459]

The brood is growing! I must be feeding them things they like I'm keeping my eye on the fat larvae waiting for the day I check on them and find a pupae.

[Cale3459]

Just checked on my colony while I was in the basement working at my work bench. The queen just laid a fresh batch of eggs! Glad to know I'm doing something right haha.

[AntLove4Evr]

Dude! Your ants look so nice! I'm so jealous!

Keep up the good work! I'd love to see more updates!

[Cale3459]

Well I have a whole new clutch of eggs mixed in with my larvae now and they are all getting huge! Was looking for someone's input on the eggs to the left of the group. They look kinda dried out. Maybe they didn't survive hibernation? The workers are still moving them around though so I wasn't sure.

[Cale3459]

Well would you look at that...I've got a pupa already. Seems like they are growing so quickly!

[Cale3459]

And we are up to 5 pupae now. Still not sure if the dark looking eggs on top of the cluster of 4 pupae are dead or not. They keep taking care of them so I'm not sure.

[Cale3459]

I wasn't happy with how big my AntsCanada outworld was with how small my colony is so for several months I have been using the test tube portal to feed my colony. I've been getting tired of doing it this way due to issues with cleanup. Last night I decided to get to work on building a smaller outworld and I'm so happy with how it turned out.

[martinnate]

Thats so cool. I love my Camponotus colony. I caught my queen 3-26-16 and it took about 20-30 days from egg to ant. She has 26 workers. Has ur "fat" one changed to puoea? If its like 2x the size of the others then she is a major. I have about 6 majors now. I have some post of them in this forum. Im about to move them from test tube to AntsCanada Omninest small. I cant wait for them to move in. Please keep posting updates.