#p.imparis

[adragonsoulants]

They finally flew today!!!

It's been so hard to resist catching a few, they just keep running past me while I've been sitting here!!!

There goes one right as I'm typing this up!!!!!

[adragonsoulants]

New ant video, this time on the Prenolepis imparis nuptial flight from earlier this year!

I am so much more fond of this video than the teramorium one.

This species is a huge favorite of mine and I've been wanting to put together a flight video since I started recording their nuptial flights!

[adragonsoulants]

Apple day for the bugs! Fresh from the yard!

I personally don't dare feed them store bought organic. A lot of reasons but primarily because of cross contamination and me just not trusting myself to clean it enough or willing to take a risk for something that's just a treat.

[adragonsoulants]

Update timeeee

The tetramorium queens I caught a couple of weeks ago both have egg piles! Interestingly, both of them have their egg piles on the top part of the tube... I wonder if it's a temperature thing?

Anyways back to ignoring them for another couple of weeks.

The Lasius lady, her brood pile is growing well and I think I saw a cocoon! All appears well with this lady, she will need a new tube before hibernation though.

Lastly the P. imparis queens I caught this spring! They appear to be doing well, all 8 of them still alive, and lookie that their first workers!! Now to see how long they remain polygynous. It turns out that P. imparis, while polygynous in the founding stage, the further north in their range you go, the less they are likely to have multi queen colonies? At very least, last year my two that were successful in reaching the colony stage, all but one queen ended up dead after the workers showed up (likely the workers killing the lesser productive of the queens).

Last update is a bit of a sad one.

So one of my P. imparis colonies from last year had a massive crash this summer, I don't know why or how. Usually the go to is something I fed them, but I fed them the exact same stuff as all my other colonies and they're all fine. All that is left of a once thriving colony is the queen and one worker.

I really doubt they will make it but nonetheless I'll still try and give them what they need. It'll be a good sign if she lays eggs again.

I also made sure to sanitize the hell out of the tools I used to get her and the worker out in case there was a disease or something transmittable.

[adragonsoulants]

Today was fairly warm and the freeze depth is currently showing 0-1in and sure enough! Ants!

I managed to find 2 P. imparis colonies moving some dirt and foraging.

And a Tetramorium colony doing a little dirt moving of their own.

[adragonsoulants]

Well, it's 4pm on the bright sunny 76°f afternoon and I have not seen a single ant.

I don't believe they are flying today, at least not here.

In many ways it is warmer than when they flew last year but, checking my local freeze depths and it's still at about 2ft, I think it was over 3ft at the start of the week.

I checked the freeze depths record for April 10th 2024 (day they flew last year) and it was 0in.

And the earliest date I recorded seeing them last year was March 3rd, freeze depth that day was also 0in.

2023 when they also flew April 10th it also looks like the freeze depth was 0in.

Again the freeze depth thing is something that feels obvious but it's nice to have the info feel more solid when it comes to this.

The previous info I could scrounge up on tracking these guy's flight was just "first warm day of spring/ the year" (sorta true?) and "look for 68f or warmer days" (now proven false). 🤷

At this point I would more so say:

Look for the first warm and decently sunny day (60f+) after the ground has mostly thawed.

All that said, I'm still gonna keep my eyes peeled, I'm itching to do some macro videography!

[adragonsoulants]

(queued may 10th 24)

Lastly, the p. imparis bunch

All in all, they're doing well. Both of the 1 year old colonies have another batch of brood and quite a bit for cropulents and repleats!

The new catches both are doing well. No dead queens so far and both have brood piles.

[adragonsoulants]

So I'm making a maybe risky move relocating this colony into a typical test tube set up. I lost one colony of the same species to a mold outbreak in this style of tube and I've been noticing little black spots pop up around the tube as well as discarded along with dead workers in their foraging space. This does not match at all with the colony that is the same exact age as them, they don't even have the black spots in their tube so...

^ the black spots (there's more elsewhere in the tube). I would assume this is just their bathroom spot but the other P. imparis colony of the same exact age does not have these so I'm worried it's something worse...

Normally I'm not too worried about mold but I have noticed so far that once mold forms in these kinds of tubes it can quickly get out of control.

My biggest worry is that the move may stress the colony into killing some of the queens considering they have miraculously remained polygynous so far.

I'll definitely give them some sugar and protein afterwards.