#formiculture

All of my ants made it through their first diapause!! And are in their snappy new set up ✨ expecting a population boom in a month-ish since they had ~15 pupa before I fridged them. Yippee!

I was moving over some of the pupa that got stuck in their original test tube with a tiny paintbrush. I held out the brush with the pupa on them to one of the workers in the out world and she so gently lifted them off the brush and left to go tuck them in in the nest. What a good big sis

(pls ignore the AI generated puzzle my gma gave me for Christmas lolol)

I’m kinda obsessed with wooden formicaria

Looks pretty good for my first print in half a year. Still need to tweak the nozzle height and bed leveling but otherwise I’m pretty ok with this. Now I just need to slap some plexiglass on the top of it and make a proper lid to keep it dark inside.

AAAAAAAA I went on vacay for a week and got back to find 3 of the queens have produced their first nanitics!!! The first two are Tetramorium, but I have no idea what the last one is. I was originally thinking raspberry crazy ant, but I am really not sure. If anyone has any ideas let me know.

Found a Lasius something queen walking around at the pool. Decided to add her to my collection, but I’m really not sure where I’m gonna put her lol.

I… know absolutely nothing about ant husbandry.  Though I did just have a lovely hour riflfing through formiculture.com and learning about an entirely new thing, which is the best way to spend an afternoon.   This page right here says 20-30 days from eggs to larva, 10-15 days from larva to pupa and 18-25 from pupa to adult, so you could have more than a month until you see adults.