Ant Farm Project - #03 - Connecting the Colony to the Farm

Hello lovely Hiveans !

I already showed and explained the arena and the gypsum nest of the ant farm and showed how my wife and son prepared them so that the colony is happy with it in the end. I also talked a bit about the nutrition plan which is mainly based on seeds and grains in combination with water, sugar water and just only a few dead insects as a protein source. Today I will show to you the ant colony and how they were finally connected to the setup .. 🐜🐜🐜🐜 .. 😁

Connecting the Colony

First of all let me show you how the colony arrived at our place. They were transported in a reagent glass. The rear part was filled with water that was separated from the rest of the glass by cotton wool. This is really nice as thus, during the whole transport and even later on after arriving, the ants are provided with a constant source of drinking water. In addition several kind of seeds and grains were added to the glass as a food source. I really like how they were sent and they arrived safely at our place 📮

Th colony is Messor Barbarus colony, a species that is native to the Mediterranean area. As I told you in the last chapter, these ants are harvester ants, which means that they are feeding almost exclusively on seeds and grains. My wife especially choose this species as their workers are not only bigger, but also a bit slower and far less aggressive than other common species. This makes it far more enjoyable to watch and handle them. In addition their high preference to a seed based nutrition makes the overall handling much cleaner, easier, and less problematic. But they also look really nice, especially the queen, which is huge 😲

As you can see in the pictures, the ants were a bit stressed. The queen fled to the rear part of the glass and was hiding in-between the workers. The light exposure after the unpacking was not to their liking, but they had to go through this 😉 .. To connect the colony to the arena, a short hose with an adapter was used that was quickly attached to the reagent glass after the entrance cotton wool was removed. As the colony was still stressed by the sudden light exposure they all wanted to flee from the glass, but it was directly covered it again, which I show you later, to not raise the urge to flee from there anymore.

Already the comparison of the workers size to the queen shows how huge a Messor Barbarus queen is in relation to the others. Next to the queen they were already 12 workers present as a little starter 😄 .. But I also have to note here, that the workers are still very small and will become bigger. Its just the start of the colony and a lot is still going to happen in the future 😁

First Discoveries

Directly after the glass was connected to the arena the first 8 workers were coming out to inspect their surrounding. This was super interesting to watch. At first all of them were coming out as a bulk and started to check the area directly in front of the hose opening. After a minute they became braver and reached out to all the places in the arena. The very interesting observation here was that they did not just went on their discovery plan-less, but had a really strategic approach. They were walking in-line all the time. Whenever the first ant discovered something interesting she stepped out of the line and the others ventured forth. That was so cool to observe and something that I actually did not expect at all. Watching ants and their behavior is so interesting. Also some may find it rather boring, it is so amazing to watch all the little details, like how they walk in a line, how they investigate new things and the intensity of their approaches. One could even directly see and identify their stress level this way 😁 .. Also its the hobby of my wife and son, I cant help it to be as amazed as they are by their Ant Farm Project 😍

Some of the ants also started to scout the big nest. But there were never more than two of them inside at all time. But the big nest is still far to large for a colony that you have seen here. The hose from the arena to the nest is also relatively long. After putting some cardboard cover around the reagent glass, the colony quickly decided to stay there. As they have water inside and some seeds it is a good decision. I suppose once the colony will grow as large as 50 ants in total they will decide to move out due to room restrictions. At this point they will also not care for the quite long walk through the hose at the nest to reach it. But at the moment the nest is also not heated yet, so that it is not so attractive for them. I am already waiting for the day they make the move 😃

The first test to give some proteins to the colony was unsuccessful. Also the ants figured out that there were two fruit flies on the protein stone they did not touch it. They also did not dare to drink yet from their two tanks. They were walking through the whole farm, getting more brave and adventures every minute, but overall, they did not do anything besides that. We even questioned ourselves if we made kind of a mistake with the fruit flies or if the tanks were not functional, but later we figured out that they just did not intend to interact with their environment yet. In fact they had something totally different in mind, hehe 😜

Their First Big Task

As you can see here they were really busy to collect some gravel stones to transport them into the hose that connected their reagent glass to the arena. This had the purpose to narrow the entry to their improvised first nest. This is an instinct of ants to protect them from enemy raids. Thereby the size of the entrance usually depends on the colony size and the flow rate through this passage. In real nature ants are even blocking their entrances from inside when they get attacked. Thus we found it understandable that they did not collect proteins or went for a sugar water nip in the beginning. This was far more important to them 😎

Thank You !

I hope you liked this episode here where I finally presented the Messor Barbarus colony and how they were introduced to the Ant Farm 👍 .. At this point the ants were kind of shutting themselves away from the environment. Also they explored and discovered the whole farm already in the beginning, they now narrowed the entrance to their glass next and only send out 1 to 3 ants at the same time to go on a check tour. So far they ignored the sugar water and proteins, but accepted and directly grabbed some seed into their nest that were offered to them. I am excited on their next moves, how they will behave in the future and what they will do once they get more used to their new environment. My wife already got a heating mat and thermometer too that she wants to use to play around with the temperature setting. Temperature and air moisture is very important for ants regarding their nest and their behavior in laying eggs and producing more workers. With the proper setup we can actually induce their movement to the gypsum nest or hep them to stay comfortable in their improvised glass nest. With the help of temperature control is winter rest can also be induced, but all these topics, as well as a proper description of the Messor Barbarus species will be discussed in some future episodes 😉