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Date Journal Entry
2001.06.19.22.58 Just wanted to give final updates as I ve been working hard on so many things it s difficult for me to keep my own journals. : The 4 Neoniger queens left from the plaster I put into the cotton glass sandwich terrarium - first 3 died then the last one succomed. They wouldn t touch food and I am unsatisfied that they were very successful. I suspect I may need to locate some of those soil mites on some of the roots of the local black walnut seeds for them to nurse I m suprised that mine didn t seem to be that robust .. I know those queens at times had hundreds of eggs and at times varying number of larvae never more than 20 ever I think from the total larvae which were produced and eaten I only got 2 pupae 1 which hatched into a worker and promptly within 7 days died.. Current story. I found a new queen underground which didn t seem to have a root when I was digging up the remnants of my myrmicinae in my front yard. I went back to the spot this year since it was a pile of soil I had previous weeded and turned. The remnants of the myrmicinae were living there. But when digging I found a isolate Neoniger queen - if she had any eggs they were lost when the soil was disturbed. So I put her in a cotton sandwich with a bit of soil - she now has what I call a wad of eggs on the order of 10-20 which she is caring for. It is hot here. I don t have airconditioning - even basement is getting warm . The remaining lasius queen is up stairs. two of the dead ones are in 80-90 alchol water solution isopropyl . So we shall see what happens with lasius. Even so I did get some decent pictures for the species archive so I may not mess around with this species much except to perhaps get head and side pictures suitable for species identification purposes. So basically I havn t been successful with Lasius Neoniger yet. But go on over to the still unidentified myrmicinae of which I don t have pictures up yet - just need to sort through what I have on another computer . A lot is going on over there.
2001.05.09.21.22 Ok. I thought all my lasius neoniger queens had died - turns out 6 are still left alive two still need to be moved - but the other 4 are now in a make shift glass sandwich terrarium where boundaries are made from wet cotton. They really seem to like this type of terrarium. Number of eggs is roughly 50 2-3 larvae one now is very large and one pupae which should hatch in a week or so. They are drinking off the cotton and look much better. Mold is non-existant - as contrasted with the old plaster which has tons of mold. I m cautiously optimistic they will survive. It s hard keeping cam 2 on them consistently as the light it requires is significant and lasius are moving around too much. I moved them a few days ago and will put up new pictures of temporary terrarium and their condition in next week hopefully..
2001.03.21.19.58



Finally I my first worker I just happened to check tonite and didn t see the pupae - when I looked more carefully I saw one light colored worker hanging out with the same queen which nursed it. I don t see much movement yet but when I get a chance will try to set up a feeding area. There are still lots of eggs and under the cam 2 is chamber where there are a fair amount of larvae as before (the queens seem to have segregated the larvae from the eggs between two chambers).

To the left are two shots of the minimae. The first is the best the second has eggs with the worker to illustrate relative size. I'm also trying to include a rough measurment of actual scale in the images based on using a ruler and the limited focus depth. I have found that the closest I can get the size is roughly (within 10% I think) 10micrometers/pixel - or 100 pixels = 1mm. I'll be trying to include scale in all photos I do.

2001.03.17.10.00 The lasius have been doing pretty well. I can t see any noticable development in the pupae. But I can see that the two remaining chambers of queens seem to have either divided the remaining brood OR one of the chambers has finally begun to allow large larvae development. So I m hopeful I will have more pupae develop soon. What is interesting is the number of eggs in the chamber where queens are tending mostly eggs are growing slightly. The one queen alone in her own chamber seems to be simply waiting for her pupae to hatch - I don t see a increase in number of eggs or of larvae. Generally I try to keep it moist and temperature within reasonable range at least in the chamber with single queen closest to the light . BTW: The camera location is on the chamber with the queens with the large larvae.
2001.03.17.09.47 The lasius have been doing pretty well. I can t see any noticable development in the pupae. But I can see that the two remaining chambers of queens seem to have either divided the remaining brood OR one of the chambers has finally begun to allow large larvae development. So I m hopeful I will have more pupae develop soon. What is interesting is the number of eggs in the chamber where queens are tending mostly eggs are growing slightly. The one queen alone in her own chamber seems to be simply waiting for her pupae to hatch - I don t see a increase in number of eggs or of larvae. Generally I try to keep it moist and temperature within reasonable range at least in the chamber with single queen closest to the light . BTW: The camera location is on the chamber with the queens with the large larvae.
2001.03.03.14.50









Ok. Roughly a week ago my 8 remaining lasius queens produced a pupae. The queens are divided amoung 3 chambers. Hopefully I ll add the images I took of those 3 chambers. The first has only one queen and she has roughly 20-30 eggs maybe 3-4 larvae and the single pupae. In the second chamber there are 4 queens with at least 40-50 eggs 4-8 larvae 0 pupae. In the third chamber are 3 queens with at least 30-40 eggs 10-15 larvae and 0 pupae.

I ve noticed that while they are sensitve to sunlight which I took photographs with in the New Lasius Neoniger section on the Species page they don t seem to be hugely bothered anymore by the light bulb. I ve learned to keep them pretty moist and somewhat cool - the queens don t seem to like to be too warm. Also the pupae is reddish because of the bleeding of the dye in the plaster to the cocoon.

To the left and bottom are shots I took of the eggs, larvae, pupae and queen. The sizes shown in the images are not relative. I have one image with eggs, larvae, pupae in it.

Temperature is probably 62-68 degrees, quite humid. Also I note that I started with roughly 12-15 queens. Not sure if the others died or what happened. I've had them since the nuptual flights on 2000.09.24.