🐜 Camponotus nicobarensis – Week 5 | More Activity & First Reactions to the Setup

Even though the colony is still quite small, their behavior is slowly starting to change more noticeably.

Over the last few days, I’ve observed that the workers are:

Because of this, the whole setup is starting to feel much more “alive” compared to a few weeks ago.

🍯 Increased Interest in Food

One thing that stands out right now is the more frequent feeding behavior.

The workers now react more quickly to:

For such a small colony, their behavior already feels much more active and organized.

At the same time, the colony still remains generally cautious.

The colony is still fully living inside the test tube.

So far, there has been no move into the prepared nest yet — which is completely normal for small Camponotus colonies.

Young colonies usually prefer:

That’s why I still give them complete freedom of choice and avoid forcing a move.

Recently, I started lightly humidifying the plaster nest.

The idea behind this is to slowly make the nest more attractive for the colony over time.

Camponotus nicobarensis usually prefer slightly humid areas for brood development, while the arena itself can remain rather dry.

Whether this will eventually encourage a move remains to be seen over the next weeks.

I still haven’t spotted any new workers yet.

However, the existing brood is visibly developing further, and the larvae seem to have grown.

In small colonies, development often takes longer because only a few workers are available to:

That’s exactly why I find these early colony stages especially interesting to observe.

Even though the colony is still small, I can slowly see more consistent behavioral patterns developing.

Especially:

make me feel that the colony is continuing to develop in a stable way.

I’m curious to see when the next workers will finally emerge.