The one thing you will not believe is that it originated from a single queen, which I caught 30 sept 2004, and that I grew the colony without boosting it.
I live in Belgium and was on a 5-day holliday in France, and I hadn’t found any queens from mating flights in the first 4 days. After a hiking trip in the mountains, I noticed the Crematogaster scuttelaris were flying in the valley. They were flying past me, and I was unable to catch them, because I was still on a very narrow path.
Very frustrated, I walked to the car, my girlfriend wanted to leave, but I wanted to stay untill I had found wingless queens. Chances were good to spot them on the parking lot. Well, as I was looking over the entire parking lot, my girlfriend sighed: there’s one on top of the car. The queen was allready paralysed by the cold.
I placed her into a tube, and on arrival in belgium she had allready laid eggs. I was afraid to lose the eggs, and the chance of growing a colony, in hibernation, so I decided not to hibernate, and instead put the tube on top of a heating ‘carpet’, 30°C. (There are no Crematogaster in Belgium.)
Sadly, I don’t have any pictures of the colony in the early stage. Those I had were lost in a computer crash.
After 42 days, the first worker eclosed, and in the end of january there were some 40 workers. The colony was fed sugar water and freshly killed roaches (Shelfordella tartara and Blaptica dubia) on an all they could ever eat basis. In the first months I only disturbed them 5 minutes a day, for feeding and cleaning. They were actually in a basement, and moved into the ‘open’ hunting area. At that point I realised a humidity system maybe wasn’t necessary for their larvae.
The population grew steadily, and I changed the one tube for a bigger one, and later added another bigger tube. (16 cm x 16 mm diameter). I guess the adult worker population in may is about 300. Two tubes on the heat carpet, with a lot of workers and brood.
I decided to let them move to an Ytong nest, because of the apparent overpopulation (Altough the ants didn’t seem to mind.)
Future Ytong nest and wooden bridge to make the crossing. The nest area is 20 x 30 cm, the hunting area 10 x 20 cm and 7.5 cm high. I use talcum powder as anti-escape mechanism.
Pictures af ants crossing:
The colony was not quite filling up the Ytong.
Before and after feeding:
End of May 2005, pictures of the queen and an egg pile.
End of june, the population more than doubled:
http://www.fxptools.net/mieren/crematog ... CT1294.JPG
http://www.fxptools.net/mieren/crematog ... CT1295.JPG
http://www.fxptools.net/mieren/crematog ... CT1298.JPG
As a was confronted with the ants outgrowing the nest again in a matter of weeks, I started building a new Ytong nest. Nest size, 45 x 25 cm, two hunting areas, and a few bigger corridors.
The moving af the colony this time took several weeks, with the bridge in between hunting areas of the new nest and the old one. 3 Monts later, this is the result, altough I relatively gave them less food and sugar water and took alway the heating for several weeks.
