There are huge facehugger mites on my pet ants in this test tube.
But today I’m going to try something crazy to help save them!
Like a mini “ant surgeon”, I’m going to attempt to go in and extract the facehugger
mites from my ants.
It will take some crazy skill to do it, but I know I have no choice but to try, for the
sake of my pet ants.
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AC Family, a lot of you urged me to remove the mites ASAP in last week’s video, but
I couldn’t do it right away for three reasons:
First, the mechanics of such an operation.
How does one physically go into a test tube full of ants and pull off a mite from one
of the ants’ chins?
I knew for sure, trying this would not be an easy task, and would require a carefully
thought out plan, if ever!
Second, I also was afraid the mite might actually be a beneficial species of mite for the ants:
a good guy!
You see, there are mites that are ‘ant friends’ that live around ants so they could gobble
up the ants’ garbage or dangerous fungi in the ant nests.
These facehugger mites could very well be those types of good mites.
Third, I was afraid the only way I could ever get one of the mites, was by removing the
worker ant the mite was attached to, and doing this at this early stage of the colony’s
development would negatively hurt the colony, as there was lots of brood to take care of
and nest space to keep clean and orderly.
Every worker’s survival counts when an ant colony is this small.
But AC Family, turns out, I did decide to go ahead and extract a mite from the colony.
Why?
Well, brace yourselves.
You guys all need to see what I’m about to show you!
Watch…
There are two things.
So this here is the colony, the Woodland Warriors, in their test tube.
Everything looks normal, right?
Brood pile is big and growing with lots of new eggs, repletes, which are the living food
storage workers, all nice and fat.
There’s our royal highness, the queen ant who also looks good, and thankfully is still
mite-free.
Now the first thing I want to show you though, is that there are several facehugger mites
in the colony.
Last week I wasn’t sure.
I initially thought there was only one facehugger mite hopping around from ant to ant, but some
of you guys have better eyes than I do apparently, pointing out shots in last week’s episode
where more than one facehugger mite was spotted in a single shot.
Multiple facehugger mites confirmed!
Thank you.
But AC Family, this second thing I‘m about to show you scared me the most!
Look, outside of the main nest area: a tonne of dead ants.
In just a week, it seems around ten or so worker ants died.
Now, it is possible these dead ants died naturally, as worker ants have short lifespans, especially
the queen’s very first generation of workers, known as nanitics.
These dead ants may very well be the colony’s nanitics, plus I knew that there was a tonne
of young still on the way to replace them, so I tried not to panic just yet.
But then, I spotted this dead body.
Do you notice something about it?
AC Family, this is a replete.
So, as mentioned, a replete is essentially a worker ant in a colony that acts as a colony’s
living food reserve, where the workers feed this replete until its social stomach blows
up like a balloon, from all the predigested food.
It then feeds this stored food to fellow hungry ants and young little by little over time.
Now here’s the thing: I’m not sure survival-wise how ants would deal with repletes nearing
the end of their natural lives, but tell me if you guys agree with this: If a replete
knows or feels like it’s dying, right, wouldn’t the best colony survival tactic be for the
replete to empty itself of all that valuable stored food, passing it on to another replete
or feeding it all out, before it finally croaks and dies?
Wouldn’t keeping all that stored food in your body to your death bed be such a wasteful
move, if you were a dying replete?
Again, I’m actually unsure how it works in ants.
I did see another gaster in the pile that kind of looked like it belonged to a replete.
So that’s when I figured, alright: Could this be evidence that the facehugger mites
are indeed the blood-sucking parasites we fear, killing off healthy Woodland Warriors?
It was all much too ‘sus’ for my liking.
If only I could somehow get one or two of these facehugger mites, so we could have my
mite biologist friends, Dr. Kaitlin Campbell and Dr. Ron Ochoa in the US, take a look at
them, particularly the underside of the mites, which they said last week, would tell them
all they needed to know about the facehugger mite’s true identity.
And then, in a strange twist of fate and pure stroke of luck, just today as I was scanning
the colony for mites, I saw this worker with a facehugger mite, but more importantly, AC
Family, I also spotted mites on both of our male ants!
Not on their faces, but on their bodies!
It seems when the mites hop onto the males, they prefer to hitch on to their bodies seeing
as their faces are so small.
One male even had two mites on it!
My heart jumped into my throat when I thought about it further.
OMG!
This was my chance!
For those of you who aren’t aware, male ants don’t do any work in the ant colony
so removing them from the colony wouldn’t harm the Woodland Warriors nor take away from
their worker force.
In fact, they would be two less mouths to feed, food which could go towards nourishing
the young and other workers.
Plus, with those big wings, I assumed that it would be easier for me to go in and pull
the males out.
This was my ultimate chance to apprehend a few of the mites!
I decided it was time to do it!
For this operation, I needed my sharpest, thinnest tweezers.
I also had a few snap cap vials on hand to quarantine the mite-carrying males.
I knew this wouldn’t be easy!
My plan was to detach this test tube from the setup, physically go into the test tube
with the tweezers, and pull the males out with the mites attached to them, all while
not having the colony panic and escape in a mad dash all over my place.
It seemed impossible, but it was now or never.
At any moment, the mites could hop off the males and I would lose this chance of getting
the mites in a way that would harm the colony the least.
Alright, guys.
Here we go!
Wish me luck!
I needed to relax as much as possible because I knew I needed the steadiest hand I could
muster.
I began to loosen the test tube from the test tube adapter as gently as I could, as I didn’t
want to alarm the colony.
Ahhh!
OK, the workers immediately sensed something was up and began rushing around my entry point
looking for an intruder.
OK.
This was going to be harder than I thought!
I waited for the colony to calm down, took a deep breath, and tried again.
I slowly loosened the test tube and went in carefully with my tweezers, keeping my eye
locked onto the male ant which carried two facehugger mites.
And by some miracle, I got him!
Yes!
By a total fluke, and with perfect aim, I managed to pinch the male by a wing and pull
him out.
But when I looked at the male I grabbed on camera, I was shocked.
I could only see one mite, there under the wing.
Where was the second mite?
That little bugger!
It must have jumped off before I pulled it out of the tube!
No!
These mites were smart.
It’s ok.
I placed the male ant with its one mite into a snap cap vial.
Alright, and now for the second male ant.
I was lucky the first time as the colony didn’t seem bothered by my tweezers, but this male
was in a more difficult position, surrounded by many ants and facing me.
This would surely be harder.
I went in carefully with my tweezers, and by some miracle again got him!
With him came three workers latching on to my tweezers but I tapped them back into their
test tube portal.
Yes, AC Family!
We now had both males each carrying a facehugger mite!
I went back to the test tube and scoured the colony for the remaining mites, but no matter
how much I tried to look, I couldn’t for the life of me find any of the mites anywhere.
These facehuggers were definitely evasive and clever!
I would have to hunt them down later.
But that was ok, because I was super thankful we were able to obtain at least two mites
and on hosts that weren’t really needed by the colony.
For me, this was a success and the mite extraction operation wasn’t as bad as I thought it
would be.
But AC Family, here’s where I need your help again.
It’s time for a group vote!
We have three options:
First, we could either take the next step, and have these mites identified by the pros
so we could determine if they are ant friends or foes?
If so, we either drown these two males with mites, in alcohol and physically mail them
over to the US for lab identification, or we physically extract the mites from the males
and photograph or video the underside of them for quicker IDing by my acarologist friends.
Still not sure if my macro camera is powerful enough though to get the identifying details
they need.
It might require a microscope, which I currently don’t have and can’t get right now, so
if my macro camera is not enough for Dr. Kaitlin and Dr. Ron to make a species ID, I would
then need to courier them over to the US ASAP and wait for the results.
The disadvantage of this route is all of this might take some time, and if these facehugger
mites are indeed lethal to the colony, we risk finding out too late with our Woodland
Warriors all dying out completely.
This to me would be a disaster!
Or second: we pursue immediate and total extermination to the facehuggers!
Should we just destroy these facehuggers once and for all, burn them at the stake, and hunt
down the remaining mites still hiding in the test tube on our Woodland Warriors?
Do you believe we’re better safe than sorry?
The last and final option is we do both!
Remove all remaining mites now and have them ID’d by the pros.
Perhaps I could place the ants’ garbage in with the quarantined ants with mites, while
waiting to hear back from the ant pros.
At least if the mites are good mites they’ll have garbage to eat and will stay alive, and
we could put them back into the colony once the ant pros deem them safe mites.
If the mites are parasitic bloodsucking mites, we will know because the ants will eventually
die and so will the mites, because they will have had no food source left, and by then
we would have thankfully already removed them from the colony.
Let me know your opinions, AC Family, by VOTING with a THUMBS UP on the course of action you
choose, listed under the pinned comment of this video.
In next week’s video, I will attempt the option the majority of you choose.
I know with your help, we can give our Woodland Warriors the best chance of survival through
all this.
As always, the fate of our ants is in our hands.
AC Family, we’re almost there!
It’s finally time to find out what these mites really are, or perhaps you think we
should kill them.
Be sure to vote and follow this ongoing mite saga by SMASHING that SUBSCRIBE button and
BELL ICON now, and hit ALL so you get notified at every upload.
Also don’t forget to hit the LIKE button every single time including now.
It would really mean a lot to me, guys.
Thank you!
AC Inner Colony, I have left a hidden cookie for you here, if you would like to have a
better look at the colony, as well as the mites that are on the males.
Go check them out!
And guys, did you know that it’s anting season in the Northern Hemisphere, and you
don’t even need to leave your home to start an ant colony?!
You can catch pregnant queen ants from the safety of your own backyard, balcony, or open
window starting this month!
Be sure to visit AntsCanada.com for all your ant keeping and collecting gear shipped to
you in a special package from our ant-loving facility in the USA, so you can get the most
out of your ant keeping experience.
We ship worldwide and also offer full email support if you need our help!
We also have a helpful forum and ant colony trading marketplace on the site.
Visit AntsCanada.com today.
And now it’s time for the AC Question of the Week.
Last week, we asked:
What is a phoretic mite?
Congratulations to Nadal the Gadget Geek who answered:
Phoretic mites are mites that are transported from
one place to another by clinging on to an insect.
Congratulations Nadal, you just won a free Ultimate Ant Keeping Handbook from our shop!
In this week’s AC Question of the Week we ask:
Why was it a perfect situation that the mites had transferred to the male ants?
Leave your answer in the comments section and you could also win a free Ultimate Ant
Keeping Handbook from our shop!
Hope you could subscribe to the channel as we upload every Saturday at 8AM EST.
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us keep making more.
It’s ant love forever!