Wow wee, dead beatles and a mailing list

Well first off I have created a mailing list that you can subscribe to, its automatic and all that jazz so even the less technically minded of you should be able to do it. I has one of these "special people" help me test it out so it should be easy. To subscribe all you need to do is click here.

See, simple pimple. Please sign up to the mailing list it will make me ever so pleased....

/begging

Right, the update, Lets go....

I had a BBQ to christen the new house, so i had it all set up nice wee fire going the coals were starting to warm up nicely. I ran my mates lady friend to go get some orange juice for her gin. Upon my return the so called friend... pah.. had put the BBQ out. He claimed he was "trying to fix it", good job Sunshine, put the bloody thing out.

So Pissed off and hungry I sprayed some lighting fluid on the coals and lit it.

It turns out that 1/3 or a bottle of lighting fluid is a tad too much, this was pretty clear as a 7-8 foot column of flame shot out of the BBQ singeing a rather lovely tree and redecorating a wall of the once red hut a lovely black.

Whats this got to do with ants... Nothing really, but while we were waiting about i decided to go kill some things to feed to my ants. I managed to track down and kill 5 rain beetles 4 of which are living in my freezer. Click here for a larger image containing beetle guts and gore and stuff.... They must have been defective though, it didn't rain or nuffink... the weather stayed lovely all day. I'll need to start giving them live food, see how they deal with that.

Tweedlies
I have covered over the ant farm to make it dark and taken away this sock to encourage the ants to move home back into the dirt. Its taken them almost two days but they have moved back in and are digging away again. They have gone egg laying crazy, when i counted there were 060 Eggs (approx), 020 Larvae and 60 Pupa (up 50 odds from 2 weeks ago) . If they all hatch in the next few day and there is cannibalism or mining accidents that will give me 100+ ants.

Larva


Pupa
image has been shrunk to fit

The best thing i found out this week is that the little black dots on the end of the pupa.... Well that's baby ant poo...... titter.

Remember to subscribe to the mailing list, all you need to do is click here.

Moving house.. still

Just to let everyone know that the ants are still alive, kicking and killing things....

Because I'm still in the process of unpacking stuff I can't find the cable for my camera as its it very very small and the pile of crap i have is very very big.

There should be an update in the next few days, if you want to be mailed when the update is online you can join them mailing list i have set up here.

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.

I'll get it Duckie Poos

Just because I can.... Well I did an experiment.. Enjoy the read, I have been told the video is the best bit....

Comments Welcome