Ants have moved home

Well it’s taken a few £’s and I’ve got a sore back because of it but myself and the ants have finally moved house.

My walking style which has been forced upon me by my sore back is similar to that of a pensioner with a full nappy. Anyway…. back to the ants.

The Tweedlies have been busy. Laying eggs like nobody’s business the two images below show sections of this image, I think its kinda cool.. I also think that they are eating some of the eggs.

About 10 of the eggs look they have developed into larvae and more of the eggs have cocooned. It’s really hard to count them so I hatched a plan.

The ant farm is set with two pieces of card at each side. This keeps the ants tunnels in darkness which they like and allows the above ground section to have daylight. Every time I remove this card to look at them they scurry about grab the eggs and run.

My plan involves a piece of highly scientific equipment….. A sock. I theorised (notice how I’m picking up all the lingo with me doing all this science) that if I covered a magnifying box with a sock (making it dark) and removed the card from the sides of the main ant farm (making it light) that the ants would eventually move to the dark magnifying boy. So was my theory right….. You bet your ass it was.

I managed to count the ants by removing the sock and quickly taking a photograph. I have marked the workers and the queens on the image below but the eggs can't really be seen in the image, I counted them with the naked eye.

* = Worker * = Queen

I counted the following using this larger image -
034 Workers
003 Queens
007 Pupa
035 Larvae
060 Eggs (approx)

The back garden to my new house is full of beetles and woodlice. I killed three beetles with the wheelie bin and decided to feed them to the ants.... They seemed to like them.