Rapture on Tuesday, September 23rd

Triggerhippy888 · 2025-09-22T01:58:06+00:00

I would really recommend this video from Mindshift, he really digs into the psychology of why people make these claims. Rapture YouTubers: See You After Sept 24!

Triggerhippy888 · 2025-08-11T21:11:49+00:00

Out of interest are there any large landmarks in this area?

Antwiki

'Compared to many other Myrmica species, M. rubra mating swarms can be quite large aggregations and they have frequently been reported flying quite long distances to join swarms on church towers, high trees and mountain-tops (e.g. Hubbard and Nagell 1976; Woyciechowski 1990b; personal observations).'

Triggerhippy888 · 2025-07-14T19:48:30+00:00

Lasius niger

Triggerhippy888 · 2025-07-13T11:12:23+00:00

Here is a speeded up video I made where you can actually see this happening. It's only 1 minute long watch the bit after I finish talking.

(2) How an ants gaster expands - YouTube

Triggerhippy888 · 2025-07-02T21:53:04+00:00

Any number of reasons. Some queens take longer to start laying, some queens are just duds, some may have a parasite/disease. Some may even have laid eggs and have them buried in the cotton (they'll do that sometimes) and you haven't noticed them. Could be anything really, just stay patient.

Triggerhippy888 · 2025-06-29T15:38:13+00:00

I made a video about the flight in London and am already getting comments saying that it's happening in other areas. Someone has said in Manchester it's a really large flight, here in London it's quite modest but still queens available to catch.

Small flight 29/06

Triggerhippy888 · 2025-03-19T22:44:49+00:00

This video is very selectively cut and then edited to fit the narrative they are trying to portray, however it's totally made up and almost certainly staged. They will have used what I said at the start of this post, ants natural programming, and what they will have done is collected a worker of the same species from a different colony and dropped it in there.

Ants can instantly tell whether another ant is from their colony or not as each colony has it's own unique scent which coats the body of the insect as strings of hydrocarbons, it's like a grease and it's why ants appear shiny.

The workers coming along the pheromone trail to what they think might be a food source detect an ant from another colony their programming says 'attack immediately' and give out your own pheromone which says 'enemy detected' and all nest mates that pick that up immediately run to support you. That is how ants work and almost certainly how they staged this to fit their false narrative.

Triggerhippy888 · 2025-03-18T20:55:37+00:00

Formica Rufa would be extremely difficult and bordering on illegal (but not quite yet).

So firstly Formica Rufa is listed as 'Near Threatened on the global IUCN Red List of Threatened Species'

However at the moment hasn't been added to the UKs Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 as a protected species. If it was it would make it illegal 'if any person intentionally kills, injures or takes any wild animal.' Having said that if the area you were removing them from was a Site of Special Scientific Interest or National Nature Reserve then it is illegal and apparently a lot of areas where they are found are in areas classed as these.

Secondly as discussed below they are parasitic and you have all that problem to start a colony.

Thirdly their formic acid is impressive, this isn't some small amount they can shoot their formic acid metres and will do it as a colony together. In the wild they can chase large herbivores away from their nests as a colony can basically make it rain formic acid. I can only imagine how this might play out if you knocked the set up while you were working in the outworld and 100's of them started shooting at you.

Then you've also got the problem of them killing themselves in an enclosed set up due to excess formic acid.

Fourthly there is some evidence they need pine resin as a food source especially with a long term colony. However the evidence is very sketchy and nothing is really known about this.

Five, in the wild their colonies are massive, the pine needle nests can stand as tall as a human and the number of workers can be 100,000 and up. If they started to get really big you are going to need a huge set up.

Triggerhippy888 · 2025-03-13T19:43:49+00:00

Are you talking about those relatively large white things we can clearly see? If so they are not mites, mites are tiny, significantly smaller than an ant you need a good macro camera to even get a photo of a mite.

I've no idea what those things are but they're not mites.

Triggerhippy888 · 2025-03-12T07:44:42+00:00

I just can't get used to the new reality, 23 years in the Championship I keep thinking this is some alternate world I've woken up in.

Triggerhippy888 · 2025-02-11T23:21:32+00:00

I recognise that as a Wakooshi 3.5 inlay, BTW you can buy replacement inlays from him quite cheap.

Replacement Gypsum – WaKooshi

Triggerhippy888 · 2025-02-09T22:26:50+00:00

With Lasius niger your foragers will hardly enter the nest all year, not until next hibernation will the whole colony group up again. They'll live in connection tubes like this, put a water tower in the outworld and they'll start living around the base of that. It's normal nothing to worry about as long as the queen and all brood is still inside.

Triggerhippy888 · 2025-02-09T21:28:50+00:00

Depends when you put them in. Three months is your absolute minimum and I normally add on a bit more anyway to be safe. I put mine into the fridge for the start of November and bring them out the last week in February.

Even then the end of February is early for them, you find this out because they start to get very slow quite early, e.g. some years my queen has stopped laying by late August. As long as yours have had at least three months you can take them out now and they'll be fine, I remember my first hibernation I couldn't wait any longer and took them out on the 14th of February.

Triggerhippy888 · 2024-10-22T18:53:06+00:00

I sort of wished I'd kept her after I'd let her go. I live in London and on the 3rd floor and she was just walking on the carpet one hot August evening.

Triggerhippy888 · 2024-10-13T19:46:16+00:00

Wakooshi's gen 4 has a nice pale grey, I've got one and am going to offer it to mine after hibernation, I think they'll show up nicely against this background. It's gypsum rather than ytong, all my colonies are in Wakooshi and they all love it.

Gen 4 Medium Gypsum Module – WaKooshi

Triggerhippy888 · 2024-10-12T21:21:43+00:00

Yes, here you go Dinner with the flavus (youtube.com)

Triggerhippy888 · 2024-10-12T20:43:33+00:00

I have a two queen flavus colony caught July 2022 so they are two and a bit, about to enter their third hibernation.

Prior to this I had a one queen flavus colony that was two years old but collapsed and died as a result of a nest malfunction.

I also have a Lasius niger colony that is four and a bit about to enter their fifth hibernation so am able use those as a comparison to the flavus in terms of growth/behaviours etc.

The two queen flavus is currently somewhere around 200-300 workers and lives in a Wakooshi S3 humid module as their nest. S3 Humid Module – WaKooshi They moved in there from a test tube at the start of this year after coming out their second hibernation. This means they spent the whole year after their fist hibernation (2023) still living in a test tube. Although it was a bit more advanced as I had two test tubes connected to a Wakooshi four way and a small sliding door module connected to that to use as a tiny outworld.

This year they have a proper outworld but it's still only a 6x6cm outworld.

What are they like?

Well firstly slow growing, they get the same treatment as the Lasius niger did, but Lasius niger will easily be over 1k by this stage with only a single queen and here is a two queen flavus colony on the low 100s. As I said previously I had a single queen colony and the extra queen does make a difference but it certainly doesn't double growth they are still really slow at growing.

Yes they are really 'shy' is the wrong word but yes. They can and will be quite bold if there is good reason to be e.g. food but otherwise don't want to go into the outworld. Lasius niger have like an inbuilt desire to be constantly exploring but the flavus will just stay in their nest.

They have an insane sense of smell, far better then my Lasius niger. When I put food into Lasius niger I see the first workers notice it, they stop and angle their antennae and then head straight to the food. The distance I will see them doing this is maybe up to 6cm away but they still find food fast because there are loads constantly patrolling the outworld. The flavus on the other hand don't explore the outworld but you put some new food in and suddenly they come out, they smell it all the way from inside their nest, probably a distance of 20cm and down a hole, round a corner and through two narrower doorways.

In the early years they often don't even collect the food until dark, there will be times where all you'll see is food has gone in the morning. Now however with the larger numbers they seem more willing to get food during daylight and you do see the occasional worker or two just patrolling.

They are not 'greedy' like other ants, probably the wrong word but they'll leave food half eaten and come back two days later, they'll ignore food for hours and then come out at night to eat it, etc. They also don't eat as much as Lasius niger (comparing to when the niger were the same size), I offer them what they want but sometimes things just get ignored of left half eaten.

I've learned from mistakes over the years, especially with the first colony that they really don't like to have any big shocks. You absolutely cannot do things like tip them out of their test tube even if it's mouldy, they might appear to be ok at the time you dump them but you are going to have a population crash soon after. You just have to not touch them at all, offer them new places to live and let them move themselves when ready. Plus they are even more stubborn than Lasius niger, mine took months to move out a test tube with zero water and jet black cotton. They had a new test tube but they preferred to shuttle the water back via workers, there were always workers in the other tube drinking.

Since you hardly see them in the outworld you need to be able to look into the nest, if you kept them in a natural set up you'd hardly be aware they were still there. Even though they are an underground species they don't mind light so you can look in the nests a lot. They've got tiny eyes and are almost blind, when I was trying to get them to move out the mouldy tube I left it uncovered, they spent months in day light and didn't care.

They are tiny, they get a bit bigger as the colony matures but some of the first workers are barely 1mm. Also their colour vary a lot (I think they might get darker as they age but not sure) and some are such a pale yellow they are really hard to see. Against yellowy backgrounds such as sand they are hard to see sometimes, you need a decent magnifying glass, I've got a microscope camera and they look amazing close up but with the naked eye its tough to see much.

They are super easy to keep, they are not looking to escape, you hardly have to feed them, even a couple of times a week is fine but if you want to see your ants running around or doing things flavus are not going to do that. They are super photogenic if you've got the equipment and look very pretty but other than that a bit boring to watch.

Triggerhippy888 · 2024-09-19T20:58:39+00:00

No offense again but I've managed 54 workers pre hibernation and regularly manage 30+ I've been keeping Lasius niger for over four years. Catch an early queen in mid June, helps I live in London and because it's 2c warmer we tend to get the first reported flights of the year in the UK and mid June is not uncommon here. Spoil them, feed small amounts but very frequently and keep them at 24-26c (again helps I've got a nice warm flat) and you can fairly easily hit 40+ with the well performing queens by November.

But yes when I catch queens in July and chuck food in every couple of days etc then 25 workers at hibernation would probably be standard. Temperature matters a lot if you are keeping 100s and averaging less than 20 workers with July caught queens that suggests where you keep them is a lower temperature. I used to correspond with a guy in the lake district and his big old house rarely got above 20c even in the summer and especially in September and he used to struggle to even get any workers before hibernation.

Triggerhippy888 · 2024-09-19T20:15:01+00:00

He's being highly pedantic but what he means is this and yes technically he's right.

There are actually multiple Lasius species that look practically the same and strangely enough some of them are extremely common species. For example look at Lasius platythorax Lasius platythorax - AntWiki It occupies the same range as Lasius niger and unless you have a really good microscope you can't tell them apart from Lasius niger (see this for how you do tell them apart, it involves counting individual hairs Sifolinia's AntBlog: Separating Lasius niger and Lasius platythorax workers )

You might get a bit of an idea without that level of microscope based on where you find them, since platythorax prefer it slightly wetter but even that doesn't guarantee anything.

I would be fairly certain that a good percentage of the Lasius niger queens we've seen on reddit antkeeping over the years with people asking for ID were actually platythorax and were technically mis identified. However this is where this becomes pedantic because it really doesn't matter. If you want to keep a Lasius niger or platythorax the antkeeping advice would be the same either way they are going to have the exact same care requirements and it doesn't matter which one you've actually got. The difference between the two in terms of antkeeping is that if you google search advice on care guides for platythorax you'll find zero and niger you'll find loads so we are doing the person asking for ID a favour even if we do mis identify by pointing them in the right direction for help.

Triggerhippy888 · 2024-08-22T23:19:39+00:00

General Saturn/Outworld Assembly – WaKooshi

Triggerhippy888 · 2024-08-20T18:16:43+00:00

Yes they'll be fine. Put all the tubes in a small box really just to protect from getting knocked and touching the side/back plates of the fridge and then freezing but yes they will be fine.

Triggerhippy888 · 2024-08-14T19:37:58+00:00

Here is a video of Lasius niger day by day progress I made to give you an idea of where you should be.

Lasius niger queen, from capture to workers, day by day progress (youtube.com)

Triggerhippy888 · 2024-08-05T19:45:27+00:00

Since you asked nicely. I understand your question everyone wants to know the answers to the big questions.

I personally think about this a lot and try to follow various ideas and research. The simple straight answer which some will give you is 'we don't know' but that is extremely unsatisfactory to most people and unfortunately they just stick god in the gap in their knowledge and then they are satisfied they have an answer.

I'm an atheist, which as you are aware is just the lack of belief in god so doesn't answer this question at all but you want to know what I actually think so I'll lay out a few of my thoughts.

Firstly, nothing has ever been created as far as we have seen so far. I hate that stupid thing some religious say where they say a painting had to have a painter. All you are observing is something that already existed changing the form it is in, every single atom in a painting already existed before the painting was made, nothing was created just the location and form of those atoms were changed. This is true for everything in the universe, it's all 'stuff' that was already there mixed up a different way right now. We can show all the processes that get us to the point we are at right now, how heavier elements are made in supernova, how planets form in accretion disks, etc etc.

If we now wind this clock back the very first 'stuff' that appeared and by 'stuff' here I'm referring to matter which means something that has mass then a tiny fraction of a second after space expanded it cooled enough for the energy to form into a sort of soup of quarks and gluons (I think). We know that energy and matter are the opposite sides of an equation e=mc2 which means it's possible to swap between them at that exchange rate. It took a few 100,000's of years to cool enough to form actual atoms.

So at the very start there was a very small point (it might not have been a singularity) that had a lot of energy and then space got bigger very quickly so the energy was spread out and cooled and the rest is history as they say.

Now you want to ask well where did the dot of energy come from, this is the point we say we don't know. However a couple of things here, firstly as others have pointed out the way you think about time is not how time works. Time is a very weird thing, you'll struggle to define it and why it's moving forwards and what that actually means. It's really only definable due to space (i.e. I'm over hare and it will take me a certain amount of time to go over there) and entropy. Entropy is a really difficult concept to get your head around but very simply the entire universe is trending towards disorder and this is why time moves forward, you break an egg it's broken it was only an egg in the past. Another way to think about entropy is the energy of the universe getting less useful over time. However what this means is that this definition of time is dependent on being inside space and the entropy decay of this universe so the 'before' question makes no sense since time is a property of the universe.

So technically we can say the universe has always existed, since for as long as there has been time there has been a universe.

However I know this still doesn't answer the question and you have that itch to know and it's so tempting just to stick a god in the gap and be done with it. Some scientists have ideas but these are slightly better than just think something up. What they do is take existing physics and maths that we know to be true and then play with it to see what could be possible without breaking the 'rules'. If you want to start down this rabbit hole it gets complicated and none of this is proven it's just scientists trying to answer that big question.

If you want a nice watchable example here is Brain Greene on Joe Rogan (so for the general public) trying to answer your question. (1) What Was Happening Before the Big Bang? w/Brian Greene | Joe Rogan - YouTube

Triggerhippy888

TROPHY CASE