Today is a very big day!
Feeding time!
My new green weaver ant queen, we’ve named the Jade Empress, now has five workers and
several more on the way, and they are all hungry!
I’m super excited because for the first time this young colony will be having their
very first meal ever, and I’ve got a delicious elixir of sugar water for them and a protein-rich
cockroach.
Their reaction to these foods will truly blow your mind!
Will they accept my food gift offerings?
Today we find out, as this young and explosive ant colony receives their very first meal
ever, here on the AntsCanada Ant Channel.
Please SUBSCRIBE to the channel and hit the BELL ICON.
Welcome to the AC Family.
Enjoy!
AC Family, I think you guys will truly love how these ants react to their first meals.
What ended up happening was not what I predicted, though and I think their reaction may surprise
you, as well.
So today we’ll be offering these ants some sugar water for carbs and a baby roach for
protein, two very basic food groups which ants need to survive.
So what do you guys think?
How do you think our weaver ants here will react to their first meals?
Will they like the sugar water and not like the roach?
Will they like the roach and not the sugar water?
Will they eat both?
Reject both?
Leave your guesses in the comments and at the end of the video go back to your comment
and let us know if you were right.
I’ll tell you this: What I predicted would happen wasn’t exactly what ended up happening,
and I’ll tell you more about that later.
But first, AC Family, let’s gather round once again for an official vote!
It’s time to finally give this young weaver ant colony an official name!
So, guys last week, I asked you to help me decide on an official name for our awesome
young weaver ant colony here, and a lot of you guys gave some amazing name suggestions.
It was super hard to narrow my choices down to just five for all of us to vote on, but
with the help and approval of your AC Senate, the highly dignified members of this channel,
whose different coloured badges appear beside their screen names in the comments, have helped
me come up with an official top five names to give to our colony.
The names we picked are listed in separate posts under the pinned comment of this video,
so to VOTE, you simply need to review the first five posts under the pinned comment
of this video, and give a thumbs up on the post corresponding with the name or names
that you like the most.
Whichever name gets the most LIKES by next week’s episode will be our weaver ant colony’s
official name.
They are all worthy names and I can’t wait to see what name we choose for them!
Now before we go ahead and feed our weaver ants, let’s have a look at the colony, as
they’ve definitely changed since you saw them last week.
The colony is much bigger and more active now.
Last week we only had two workers and both were kind of still weak as their exoskeletons
were hardening, but in just a week, the colony is up to five very active workers, and AC
Family, check this out!
As I looked into the bottle, I noticed the Jade Empress was cleaning something in her
brood pile.
Upon closer inspection, I was pleased to see that the queen was grooming a pupa, in fact
she and the workers were busy grooming a couple pupae, which were about to eclose.
‘Eclosing’, guys is just the technical term for an ant emerging from its pupa, because
it doesn’t actually emerge from anything like a butterfly would from its cocoon.
Ant pupae just kind of break open their folded legs and start moving around, and the Jade
Empress and workers cleaning the pupae like this with their mouthparts, probably helps
get the circulation going in these newly eclosing adult worker ants.
Imagine emerging into the world as a newly formed worker ant, with a new body after being
a helpless larva your whole life.
It must be a pretty crazy experience, I bet!
It was awesome to see that this new weaver ant colony of ours was doing so well, because
in ant keeping, weaver ants are known to be a very difficult species to start from just
a single pregnant queen ant, as we’ve done with this colony.
I don’t know anyone who’s successfully done it, and it’s usually at this stage
that most people fail and start to see their workers mysteriously die off one by one eventually
ending with the queen dying off last.
This has been my experience in the past, as well.
Not much is known about how these weaver ant colonies get started in the wild, so this
weaver ant series and adventure we’re all embarking on is truly valuable to science.
Now these workers are the first generation of worker ants known as ‘nanitics’, and
they are super important for the success of the future colony because they will be the
pioneers during this critical stage.
What they do from here on in and for the rest of their rather short lives, and I’ll explain
more about that in a minute, will make the difference between whether or not this ant
colony thrives or dies out.
ce nanitics, though super full of energy, are actually smaller than usual, only because
they were raised on the queen’s self-made soup, i.e. liquified mucle tissue from her
back.
For this same reason, the nanitics are also much more frail than usual weaver ant workers
and live shorter lives.
In mature weaver ant colonies, the workers actually come in varying sizes.
This here is the Emerald Empire a mature weaver ant colony we collected and owned in the past
on this channel.
Now weaver ants aren’t classified as ‘polymorphic’, like say, Marauder ants are, where you have
tiny workers and then these specialized massive workers with a completely different body form
with huge heads, but weaver ant workers do come in different sizes.
There are really tiny ones measuring less than a cm long, and then there are really
big ones which can get up to a centimetre and a half.
You might also notice that weaver ants are really ‘leggy’ ants.
This is because of their very unique lifestyle.
If you’re new to weaver ants, these ants live in trees and plants.
They use their long, powerful legs to pull leaves together while other workers go in
to glue the edges of the leaves together using silk produced by their pupating larvae.
The result are these truly majestic leaf basket nests hanging from the trees.
I love seeing the ants construct them!
The ants can also form bridges with their bodies, so having extra long legs and jaws
helps, and you’ll get to see these great weaver ant jaws and legs at work with these
nanitics soon in this video.
Now, it looks like the Jade Empress here is still very much so involved in the care of
her brood, but I’m sure she’s relieved now to have some help caring for the growing
brood pile.
Check out this worker handing the queen an egg, which was probably just laid and plucked
from her gaster.
“Thank you, Chip!
I’ll take that!”
The Jade Empress herself has truly been a warrior through this whole colony founding
process and I am so proud of her.
I mean, imagine this: She left her birth colony over a month ago to fly into the air to mate
with males during her nuptial flight, then she set off on her own to look for a place
to start her colony, which was when we caught her and placed her into a plastic bottle.
She broke her wings off inside the bottle and proceeded to lay eggs.
Then when the eggs hatched she fed them a self-made soup made from liquified muscle
tissues in her back which used to power her wings during her nuptial flight.
And for a month, she did not eat once, as she continuef to protect the growing brood
ferociously, while feeding her own body tissues to her babies, until they reached adulthood.
This is the miraculous wonder of the ant colony founding process that we ant keepers love
watching.
The queen has been fasting this whole time, and I’m sure she was starving now, as her
very finite supply of self-made soup reserves depleted.
And so AC Family, with the arrival of all these eager workers plus more on the way,
at this stage in the wild, these nanitics would be tasked with finding the colony’s
first legit meal for the queen, her growing brood, and the larvae.
Eating now is super critical particularly for the Jade Empress, who needs it the most,
as she’s the one laying eggs and feeding the larvae.
AC Family, behold!
An AC Test Tube from antscanada.com full of what I call the Ant Elixir of Life.
I watched the sugar crystals fall and dissolve in the purified water I mixed them with inside
the test tube.
The sight was like watching a snow globe, and truly hypnotic.
All ants can’t resist sugar-water and I was certain our weaver ants would love this
delicious sweet mix.
Now in order to provide this sugar water to the colony, I also needed this.
An AC Test Tube Adapter, also from antscanada.com, which I’ve placed into a hole I cut out
from a bottle cap.
Now to attach the AC Test Tube Adapter to the AC Test Tube, and all was set.
AC Family, the plan was to quickly and carefully unscrew the the bottle cap and place this
bottle cap attached to the sugar water to the bottle, hopefully while ensuring no nanitics
escape, because they seem super energetic and fast!
Alright guys, are you ready?
Let’s see how they’ll react to our sugar water.
1 - 2 - 3!
Unscrewing the bottle cap and replacing it with the sugar water bottle
cap.
And done!
AC Family, let’s watch!
I waited for one of the workers to discover the opening to the test tube adapter.
All it took was one curious ant to wander through the test tube adapter and into the
test tube to have a single taste of the sweet goods within, before the entire colony would
be informed of our delectable sugar-water offering.
I waited, and waited, and waited, and I kept waiting, but it did seem like the workers
just weren’t interested.
Surely they could smell something was out there, but perhaps the workers just weren’t
curious enough yet.
Hmmm…
After waiting a good half an hour for the ants to wander into the sugar-water test tube
and still not seeing the ants enter the test tube, I decided perhaps the colony wasn’t
ready for sugar.
OK, time to proceed to Phase B!
Blattodea, that is!
This here is my colony of Turkestan roaches, scientifically known as Shelfordella lateralis,
a very popular feeder roach which are soft-bodied and ideal for insectivorous pets that prefer
smaller feeders.
Right now they’re living in egg carton, but I plan on making them a more natural terrarium
in the future.
Been a bit busy with something lately.
Ahem…
Anyway, with my tweezers I was like a bird with my aim… and bang!
Caught a tiny baby roach.
Sorry, little one.
You’ll be feeding my new weaver ant colony….
Hopefully!
Alright, AC Family!
Do you think the weavers will prefer some meat?
I approached the bottle and proceeded to carefully place the squashed baby roach inside.
Ugh!
I was having trouble.
The roach was sticking to the tweezers!
Ahh!
A worker came in from the side and took a swipe at the roach, ripping off a leg!
Haha what a brave little firecracker!
I finally managed to get the roach off my tweezers and watched to see what would happen.
I was delighted when I spotted another worker actually picking up and bringing in a roach
leg.
Yay!
Enjoy the dark meat, ladies.
Oh!
She dropped it.
Ok…?
Later, another worker came along and actually got the roach and proceeded to pull it upwards!
Now here’s where we get to see that awesome weaver ant jaw and leg strength in action!
Keep in mind, the ant is carrying something much heavier than its own body weight.
Handling the food item like this is very typical weaver ant behaviour, because in the wild,
the ants would be stretching out struggling prey and waiting for it to die.
It’s a very good safety precaution these weaver ants instinctually have in their feeding
protocol, because weavers love hunting living food, and as you can see in this clip, a lot
of times the food have weaponry to fight back.
See that stinger popping out?!
They’ll have to wait until the prey dies before taking it back to the nest!
Eventually, when the worker felt the roach was dead enough, it put it down then began
to nibble from the exposed flesh.
The worker disappeared for a bit, then returned to drag it higher, and then strangely left
it there.
Ok…?
Soon the worker returned and proceeded to carry it deeper into the nest now, and closer
to the colony.
Yay!
Will the rest of the colony approve of this roach meat?
The worker presented it to the colony.
“Guys, I’ve found this, made sure it was dead, taste tested it, and I find it pretty
yummy!”
The other workers began to feed on it.
But would the Jade Empress approve?
She seemed more preoccupied with the now five eclosing pupae.
A worker brought the roach closer to the brood pile.
That was when, the Jade Empress had a whiff of something delicious nearby, and just like
that: success!
After over a month of not eating, our Jade Empress proceeded to feast on a scrumptious
meal she truly deserved, fit for a queen.
Ahhh what a moment!
As an ant keeper, I just love this event!
The moment a queen has her first real meal after a long fast.
There’s just something magical and karmic about it!
She and the workers continued to feed from the roach and I also caught the Jade Empress
having a drink of fresh water with her roach steak.
She also made sure to clean herself periodically.
Can’t be dirty right now, as the whole nest area needed to be mold-free.
In fact, one hilarious worker began to pull roach further away perhaps thinking the roach
was too close to the babies, but the queen wasn’t finished:
“Hey… nomm nom… wait!
I’m not done…
nom nom..
Where are you taking this?”
So funny!
The queen and all the workers made sure to also cleaning up any lingering roach juice
in the vicinity just to make sure no mold had a chance at growing anywhere near the
brood.
And that was that, AC Family!
Our new weaver ants had their very first true meal and my heart couldn’t be more full.
I loved watching the queen feed with her workers.
She and the workers will continue to feed from this roach over the next 24 hours and
all that valuable protein and other nutrients will go on to fatten up the queen, who can
power up now in strength and vigor after her long fast and go on to lay better quality
eggs.
She also no longer will need to feed the larvae at this point, because the workers can from
now on be the ones to hunt for food and bring back the goods to her and the young.
With all these workers coming now, our Jade Empress can just focus on her main role which
is to lay eggs.
Over the next week, the workers will go on to take care of all other duties including
caring for the queen, the brood, hunting, cleaning, and hopefully soon nest construction.
The way I see it, soon, AC Family, this water bottle will be full of workers and perhaps
then the colony will be ready to be placed into a terrarium on a plant where they can
go on to construct their legendary leaf nests.
I’ll continue to keep the test tube of sugar water attached for when the colony is ready
for some carbs.
AC Inner Colony, I have left a hidden cookie for you here, if you would just like to watch
our new weaver ant colony feeding on their roach.
Go check it out!
If all goes well, guys, and we get lucky, this beloved weaver ant colony of ours, miraculously
birthed from our precious Jade Empress, in all her green glory, continues to flourish,
to one day become the epic weaver ant kingdom we all hope they’ll become, ruling in the
trees.
Also please be sure to ‘like’ this video if you enjoyed it, and subscribe to the channel
to join our AC Family and be part of this amazing peek into the secret lives of weaver
ants on their on-going journey to glory.
Until next week, thank you all for watching and supporting the ants.
It’s ant love forever!