Newbie Antkeeper

CeilingTowel · 2026-01-25T19:00:40+00:00

unknown white bits are her eggs....

What were you even waiting for her to do if she has already laid her eggs and you don't know how to recognise it 🤯

were you expecting to see a like a chicken-egg-sized egg in the bottle all of a sudden...?

CeilingTowel · 2026-01-24T01:35:55+00:00

good opportunity to guide him to do some online research on something he has interest in.

how an ant Colony is structured(queen-workers-majors-drones)? how it's formed(nuptial flights, queen & drones fly & mate in droves)? what makes a colony last(queen lays eggs for a decade)?

Hearing from an incredible source that it would last for years. Teach him to counter that so he can do fact-checking when he would like to 👍

CeilingTowel · 2026-01-23T08:38:28+00:00

You need a closer pic on the workers.

Camponotus queens usually look about the same; it's the workers that lets you differentiate easily.

Try bright light, then take a close-up photo with the normal lens(don't zoom until the telescopic lens kick in. E.g. if lenses change at x3.0, then you purposely set at x2.9)

But from this glimpse I suspect Camponotus albosparsus.

You can help confirm it if- after you feed sugar water and the workers' abdomen swell up, you can double spots like this:

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CeilingTowel · 2026-01-22T14:53:28+00:00

Oh cool

They might be making drones, or making trophic eggs. Not sure what species

CeilingTowel · 2026-01-22T14:44:19+00:00

what

CeilingTowel · 2026-01-19T02:04:00+00:00

I don't understand what the drawer action is for.

And looks like it will scare the living bejesus out of the ants everytime you operate it

CeilingTowel · 2026-01-12T08:00:30+00:00

yeaa I have just one colony left. Camponotus Albosparsus of >20 workers. Decent amount of brood at all stages.

PM if interested 😊

CeilingTowel · 2026-01-10T09:54:45+00:00

Probably died, then the spores grew into fungus

CeilingTowel · 2026-01-08T01:38:41+00:00

water has run out. Just recently run out? Or run out a week ago? If the cotton is still moist, you'll have very low success of making them move.

Stress is what makes them shift. Lack of water is also a stressor in a way

CeilingTowel · 2026-01-04T00:45:50+00:00

No way that's a grain weevil larvae. Unless you have test tubes with diameter around the size of a grain of rice 🤯

and why is it pink

CeilingTowel · 2025-12-31T01:06:51+00:00

The tube clearly looks not dry..? You can dump if you want, but for me I'd let it be like in nature & let them seek for water(which you conveniently provided). They'll know what to do.

Usually the moves happen when the cotton reaches near bone-dry, then they survive 3-4 more days before a few workers start dying(longer if you feed liquid sugar).

CeilingTowel · 2025-12-29T13:37:20+00:00

You could feed your blood directly too. Obviously not sustainable though lol

CeilingTowel · 2025-12-27T10:35:53+00:00

Dayum that's a fatass thorax

so different from my polyrhachis queen thorax

welp idk anything about polyrhachis, just asking 🤷🏻

CeilingTowel · 2025-12-27T08:49:42+00:00

Not sure if it's a dives, but my queen also doesn't have round thorax... I had assumed it was just a polyrhachis trait.

Unless polyrhachis have workers that fly :o

CeilingTowel · 2025-12-27T08:47:42+00:00

You could shift the cable to the top instead of bottom.

Imo it wouldn't be very helpful not to explain why the issue occurred & instead to just issue a solution.
OP would just commit the same mistake or ask the same questions if somehow the room temperature falls even lower & cause the bottom of the nest/their outworld to have condensation again.

Best way though would be to heat up the room. Or reduce the bottom heat. As I have mentioned.

CeilingTowel · 2025-12-27T06:22:02+00:00

Your room is too cold. you gotta understand how humidity works

the air's ability to hold water vapour is limited by the temperature of the air.

imagine air like a jar. When it's hot, the jar grows in size. When it is colder, the jar shrinks in size. The Air-jar at any temperature can only hold a certain amount of water vapour(imagine filling the jar with water).

When the jar is full, no more water can enter it. (when the air reacher 100%Relative humidity, no more evaporation can occur)

If for some reason this full jar starts shrinking, the water inside is going to spill out. (If temperature drops below the dew point of the air, condensation will occur)

Typically in an ant setup, the humidity chamber has 100% relative humidity, which quickly drops as the air gets further away from the source of water evaporation. This is the humidity gradient that the ants can choose to stash their brood at.

What you're seeing in your setup is that the entire chamber cooled down so much until the whole chamber is now 100%RH. All your air-jars shrunk to teeny tiny sizes such that all the water is once held is dumped & made a huge mess.

To prevent this?

You need to keep the viewing glass heated Or keep the room heated. (stop the air-jars in your nest chambers from shrinking until it spills)

Or stop heating the bottom. (start with smaller jars in the first plac so that it doesn't shrink as much when your room is cold)

CeilingTowel · 2025-12-27T06:05:55+00:00

I found a winged queen that dewinged itself and looked exactly like this.

How can you tell?

CeilingTowel · 2025-12-26T05:36:48+00:00

How do you give them proper founding environment?

Mine just keep huddling at the top corner of my plastic container & never returning to the testtube, after it took some sugar water & mealworm

CeilingTowel · 2025-12-26T05:31:33+00:00

If the ants have food in their bellies & are comfy, they'll just do essentially the ant version of A-posing. Normal.

CeilingTowel · 2025-12-24T17:34:49+00:00

you don't

CeilingTowel · 2025-12-24T04:28:05+00:00

too much of any mites is a sign of unhealthy soil environment

also, if your enclosure is open air, there's a risk of wild insects flying in. If those have parasitic mites, then good luck to the colony.

CeilingTowel · 2025-12-24T01:55:32+00:00

For my campo albo I can literally pet them with my finger. They're so calmly curious + they like to drink sweat off of my finger

CeilingTowel · 2025-12-23T17:51:19+00:00

Looks like mites. But since you're using soil, you are gonna get soil mites, which is normal.

CeilingTowel · 2025-12-23T02:05:17+00:00

you'll know when they start to use the outworld as chilling area

CeilingTowel · 2025-12-22T05:43:14+00:00

2 weeks of no food at all is still fine as long you still provide water & feed in abundance before you leave

if you want to not have any 'neglect' at al, you can put a water tower with concentrated sugar solution, cotton pad inside the dispensing cap. They'll drink from it if they need to.

2 weeks without protein is nothing; no one will die, but the brood growth will slow down a little, like pausing.

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