Pan Breed

Well, Ive been moving house which is great fun so I haven't been updating much... That's my excuse anyway and I'm sticking to it.

One of the Tweedlies is dead. With due care and respect I popped its wee lifeless body onto the scanner. To give you an idea of size the ants head is 2mm long.

I'm shattered and busy so I'm heading to bed....... I did get this weird email that made me laugh... Not sure why..

I read your webby!
Really enjoyed it, v. funny!
My mum said I shouldn't e~mail you... but I have anyway...
I have an Ant World at home it
doesn't do much... I don't have a queen, and I don't have a credit card so I can
order extra bits to make it more interesting...
IT'S MY B'DAY IN 6 DAYS!!
I'm only 11...
Sorry... That was very random...
Sorry... For boring you
Sorry... G2g I have a BBQ

Byezy Bye,
From
Me.

Queeeeeens

Its official, there are 3 queens in the Tweedlie colony. So their names are Queen Tweedlie, Queen Graham and the newly discovered Queen Chipper. You can see all three lard asses in the in the image below.

Ready for some education here.... Are we sitting comfortably now children... ? Then I shall begin.

Well when your mummy and daddy met each other, they decided they liked each other very very much and had a special cuddle. Your daddy planted his see in your mummy's tummy and one joyous day 9 months later you were born.

I am assuming it was joyous, I don't know all your individual life stories. I mean, your father could resent your very existence. He could blame you for stopping him from living his dreams. He could also blame because you are the reason he is stuck with the fat sow of a woman he now has to call his wife because of your miserable existence. But lets for now assume that it was joyous.

Ants are a little different. They do have a special cuddle. But they then start to lay eggs. The eggs are titchy tiny then after a wee while they turn into larva. Larva are little wormy things that don't have eyes and no legs. They eat ant sick regurgitated by adults... Mmm, yummers.

Pupa are the next stage. When the larva has had its fill of ant vomit it spins cocoon and pupates. and emerges some time later as an adult ant... Exciting hu.

So what i hear you say, why did i just waste time reading this crap. Well the orphans have been running about with two pupa. Thats all...

I've also kinda decided that I need to get the Tweedlies a bigger home. If they have 3 queens all laying eggs the colony is going to get pretty big pretty quickly. That is assuming I don't kill them by then. I'm actually pretty surprised I haven't already.

The fly..... Has arived

I took delivery of two east coast flies today. I fed the big one to the Tweedlies as protein for the Queens and the smaller to the Orphans.

This is the big one being tucked into by the Tweedlies

I'm a little worried about Tweedlie and Graham. They appear to be in two different chambers as you can see in this photograph below. From what I have read I think they will come to blows soon, they are laying lots of eggs though :)

Cool hu :)

Tweedlies house

A comment by barnettgs on an earlier post asked if I had bought 2nd Ant World for Tweedlies.

The short and somewhat boring answer is yes, I bought a second Ant world. I was planning on putting them in a tank but I wanted time to make it escape proof. I plan to transfer them sometime in the future.

When i I first put the ants in the ant world above the the soil was level with the rather fetching pink card, shows they have been busy. They have even started digging tunnels in these mounds.

Lots of lovely ant eggs

The eggs are stored in the bottom right hand corner for the ant world. I always just assumed that they were kept with the queen. I can see how many there are because they keep hiding the eggs when i remove the card to have a sneaky wee peek. I'd guesstimate there are about hm....

Queens Tweedlie and Graham
Both the Queens are now holed up in the one chamber. I have a feeling that there are three Queens but I don't have proof yet. If there is a third I will call her chipper. There are some photographs of the queens below.

Food
One comment I had suggested i feed the ants some pink things.... I did have some marshmallows... But i ate them...... Coz I'm a fatty. The flies captured by a friend are still in their freezer, I haven't had a chance to go through and get them. The Orphans have gone off the honey but both colonies love cheese. I have still to publish the food experiment I did the weekend before last. Will do it in the next few days... I think its worth the wait :D

Great big drity dead fly

One of my friends has promised me a great big dead fly. They found it today and they are keeping it in the freezer for me.

I have great friends :)

I ran an experiment over the weekend and the results (which I will post later in the week) from the Tweedlies were very disappointing to say the least. The orphans did very well though.

The Tweedlies (and the orphans) are in standard ant world ant farms like the one here-


The Tweedlie ant farm only had one magnifying box connected via one of the portals (see diagram) which made the other portal a dead end. I decided they might have performed so badly in the experiment because of this.

I decided to attach one end of a tube to the capped off portal of the Tweedlie colony and attach the other to the magnifying creating a loop.

I slowly removed the cap and saw a wee black leg and head poke out. So I put my thumb over the portal cap and quickly jammed the tube onto the portal. Immediately three ants shot out into the tube like retarded bullets, falling over each other and it looked like two were having go at the 3rd.

So I peeked into the cap that I had covered with my thumb. It contained two ants and about 40 eggs, looks like they had been using it as their nursery which make sense because it’s the darkest part of the ant farm.

I dropped the cap into magnifying box and by the morning the eggs and the two ands had disappeared, ants are cool :)

Food
I managed to kill a jumping spider that was preventing me from brushing my teeth and a fly. The tweedlies ignored the fly and dragged the dead spider about for a bit then left it. I gave the spider to the orphans who quickly attacked the already dead spider for several minutes then ate it. So the Tweedlies win the gay ant award this week. Both colonies have been eating the honey well.

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.