21 June 2024.
Wow, life has been busy for me over the past one year, including having to have a hernia repair operation and a bit of a cancer scare, which fortunately turned out to be negative. Phew!
So why the title “Farewell Lasius niger!”? Long term visitors of this website of mine may remember back in early 2000 I had an Lasius niger colony that I raised from a single queen ant. That colony grew so large I had to relocate them into my garden. Following that they thrived for years. However, not even queen ants live forever, and the queen of that colony eventually died of old age (20+ years!) and as a result the whole colony slowly died out.
My current Lasius niger colony has also grown very large. So I placed their ant farm into the garden, with a plastic tube going from the nesting box to the wild outside. I fully expected them to move out, but no; they are still in the nesting box, but happily foraging in the garden. I fully expect them to move out as they increase in size, but it will be interesting to see what become of them.
Myrmica rubra
This colony of mine, now my only indoor captive colony, continues to do well. There was a time when I thought it was dying out, but perhaps the queen was resting. This year the colony appears to be growing again.
Interestingly I had what I call two worker queens in that colony. These were de-winged queens that had not left the nest. They were somewhat smaller than the mother queen, and acted more like workers. They would leave the nest regularly to forage like a worker. It was very fascinating. However, the workers were only prepared to put up with them for a certain amount of time, before they did away with them.