Some ant on ant action

I finally got the colony with the queen transferred to an Ant World, less chance of them escaping. And now the colonies have names Woo hoo :)

The first colony of Lasius Niger ants that came in the post has been named the “Orphanage” and the colony housing queen Tweedlie has been named the tweedlies “Tweedlies”, still not sure what species they are but I know there not Lasius Niger like the lil orphan ants in the Orphanage.

Just As I’m writing this I noticed that the Tweedlies have what looks like two queens, there are now two fat six legged balls of spunk and ovaries in the colony instead of one…yay.

I have named the second one Graham.

Ant Disney
All is going to plan with ant Disney, they have a little rubbish tip, a moss garden and a sand pit. Photographs to follow. If they had mail privileges or indeed if ants sent mail then their little post cards they would send would be all positive…. I think.

Food
I think I’ll have to make up a list of good and bad things to feed ants. Ants hate bacon and bacon fat ant don’t like it, they totally ignored it, now honey on the other hand they love it.

I bought the cheapest honey that money can buy, Morrison’s own brand at 90 odd pence. It stinks, I’ve never tasted honey before (still haven’t) but the smell from it is disgusting made nearly made me heave. I might try some later.

I put a dollop of honey in for each lot of ants. The orphans got very excited after 5 minutes 20 ants were running around the honey but not getting too, after 10 minutes things had calmed down and one ant was eating from the honey dollop. The tweedlies on the other hand got stuck right in, after 5 minutes there were 3 ants eating after eating from the dollop. After 10 minutes five ants were tucking in…. After 15 minutes I got bored…

One strange thing about the honey though, when I got up in the morning both the orphans and the tweedlies had put lots of grit in the honey and I have no idea why.

I found a freshly dead fly (on the bumper of my car) and decided to feed it to my ants. I was going to check back every five minutes but when I looked back it was gone. So you can add to your notebook that ants like smooshed flies.

Ant on ant ActionI put a dead ant from the tweedlies in with the orphans. The ants in the orphan colony are about ½ the size of the ant from the Tweedlie colony so when the smaller ant found the larger dead ant it bolted. It came back a short while later with a pal and they kept taking runnies at the dead ant and nipping at it. After while they realised it was dead and pulled off the antenna and some legs to make sure this dead ant couldn’t get away. The are currently tucking into its big fat abdomen.