Last week, we said goodbye to one of the OG ant colonies of this channel.
It was with great sadness that we discovered that the Fire Nation, my five year old fire
ant colony, had died out.
But with great endings come new beginnings, and I can’t wait to introduce to you the
heirs to the Fire Nation’s throne.
AC Family, today we meet our brand new fire ant queen and her first pioneering generation
of fire ant workers.
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Welcome to the AC Family.
Enjoy!
Behold!
The great successors of the Fire Nation.
What you’re seeing here is a new fire ant queen with her first generation of worker
ants.
These ants are about to receive something truly special, so do keep on watching until
the end to witness something magical this colony is about to receive.
Now in this test tube setup, we have the queen, so gorgeous.
We also have the first set of workers, which are known as nanitics.
You can also see eggs, larvae, and pupae.
Check out that light coloured worker ant which recently eclosed from its pupal stage.
In a few days, it will be moving around like the other workers, and its exoskeleton properly
hardened.
I find this fledgling fire ant colony to be so cute, and I feel they’ll quickly rise
in numbers to take their place as the mighty fire ant colony of our Antiverse.
Now, I was thinking.
What should we name this colony?
Should we call them Fire Nation 2.0 or the Neo Fire Nation, or perhaps the Phoenix Nation,
as was popularly suggested in last week’s video.
Let me know what you think we should name this great fire ant colony in the making in
this ipoll here.
Thank you, AC Council for your input.
You’ll notice the queen lays super still.
She’s actually resting and preserving her energy, and for good reason.
She’s currently not in her best form at the moment.
You see, the queen hasn’t eaten a real, full meal in weeks and has gone through quite
a lot over the past month.
So get this, after a queen mates during her nuptial flight, she breaks off her wings,
and goes off to seal herself within a chamber in the soil, known as a claustral cell.
In this claustral cell, the queen does not eat and subsists entirely off energy stores
in her back muscles which previously powered her wings for flight.
She lays eggs and once these eggs hatch into larvae, she feeds the larvae a self-made nutritious
soup, again created from her back muscle stores, which she regurgitates up for the larvae to
eat.
The larvae grow, develop into pupae, then eclose into adult worker ants.
So, this queen here is starving.
She literally raised these workers and larvae off her own body tissues this whole time.
Sound pretty crazy but it what she’s built to do.
It’s important she doesn’t move around too much, though.
She must preserve her energy at all costs if she wants to survive to perpetuate the
colony.
The success of the entire colony now lies in the hands of the nanitics.
The most important first task of these workers is to wander out into the world, and bring
back some food so the queen can finally eat after all these weeks of fasting, and AC Family,
guess what: We’re about to make that moment happen now.
Let’s feed them!
AC Family, I can’t wait for us to see this!
Using a toothpick I placed a tiny drop of honey into their test tube setup.
Now let’s watch!
Instantly a couple ants discovered the honey.
Then a third came along to drink.
Then a fourth… a fifth… and a sixth came to drink.
A seventh ant came along and an eighth.
It was awesome to see that the honey was such a hit!
You also have to remember that these ants have only known the self-made regurgitated
soup from their mother, the queen.
I imagine, as great as that must taste, this honey must truly be blowing their minds right
now!
Wouldn’t you think?
The queen began showing signs of excitement.
I think she had been informed that her nanitics had found something tasty just beyond.
A few minutes later, workers with full social stomachs came back to regurgitate the goods.
At first, I saw the workers were feeding other workers.
This process of regurgitation and mouth to mouth feeding is called trophallaxis, something
all eusocial insects like bees and termites do to distribute food among members of a colony.
Then I noticed a worker feeding a larva.
I bet that larvae was loving the honey.
When the worker was done feeding it, you could actually see the honey in the larva’s stomach
through its semi-transparent body.
How neat right?
And then finally, a worker moved in to give their starving queen mother her very first
meal in weeks.
Just awesome!
More and more workers continued to feed their queen via trophallaxis.
She accepted their offerings graciously.
For me, watching a queen and nanitics of a starting ant colony receive their very first
meal is truly one of the most beautiful things to witness in the hobby, one of those ant
keeping joys.
Over the next few days, I will continue to offer our fledgling fire ant colony here various
small meals, like a cricket leg or a mealworm head.
The days of fasting and subsisting on the queen’s own body tissues are now over, as
the workers will be the ones feeding the queen and brood from now on.
With the queen properly nourished and a growing army of worker ants caring for her and her
future brood, she no longer needs to do anything else but perform her primary duty of laying
eggs.
I think it’s super cool for us to be able to start this awesome new journey with this
new fire ant colony of ours.
I think it’s extra cool because it’s been years since we’ve been able to start an
ant colony from scratch like this on the channel, and I think it would be great for us to watch
how a massive fire ant colony of the likes of our late Fire Nation, emerges from such
humble beginnings.
Given ample food and resources, this species literally explodes in population, so I anticipate
that this colony will need to move out of here in a week or two.
I plan on moving them first into a Hybrid Nest, and then once they outgrow that, move
them into a terrarium perhaps.
But here’s the thing about moving them into the Selva de Fuego, the old home of our Fire
Nation.
A lot of you spotted that the supermajor in last week’s episode had a blood sucking
mite on it!
It freaked me out because it meant that mites could have been responsible for wiping out
the Fire Nation, and not old age of the queen.
But, it could also be possible that the blood sucking mites came after the queen had died
and the population started to dwindle and weaken.
Whatever the case, I’m not going to take risks, and I have decided that I am going
to have to ditch the Selva de Fuego and create an entirely new vivarium from scratch.
I still have a few months to plan before this colony will be big enough to move in a terrarium
anyway.
Though the past few weeks have been quite rough, this new fire ant colony brings me
new hope.
Though they don’t seem like it yet, this cute ant colony will soon rise to become the
savage, aggressive, and powerful fire ant kingdom we once knew in the Fire Nation, and
until then I’ll continue to nurture them and film their evolution, every step of the
way.
Thank you for watching.
It’s ant love forever.
AC Family, are you as excited as I am about this new fire ant colony?
I look forward to building new memories together with them and learning about them.
I wonder if they have a different personality than the Fire Nation.
So much is in store ahead so if you haven’t yet, SMASH that SUBSCRIBE button and BELL
ICON now and hit ALL so you get notified at every upload, because I believe notifications
seem to be broken but the Youtube support team is on it.
Also don’t forget to hit the LIKE button every single time including now.
It would really mean a lot to me.
Thank you, guys!
AC Inner Colony, I have left a hidden cookie for you here, if you would like to watch some
extended play footage of our new young fire ant colony.
And now it’s time for the AC Question of the Week.
Last week, we asked:
Which was your favourite memory of the Fire Nation?
Congratulations to Patrick Tierney who answered:
My favorite moment in the Fire Nation’s history
was when they were escaping their enclosures.
Congratulations Patrick, you just won a free Ultimate Ant Keeping handbook from our shop!
In this week’s AC Question of the Week we ask:
What is the name of the process of mouth-to-mouth food transfer in eusocial insects?
Leave your answer in the comments section and you could also win a free e-book handbook
from our shop!
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It’s ant love forever!