@takexthisxlight submitted: What do you do when you no longer have any carpet beetles that you tool care of over the winter but have a lot of extra beetle jelly?
Put some of it outside and see what gets to it first.
I'm not surprised by the result, and I'm happy there's an ant colony out there whose eating well tonight. 🤗
Beetles are my favorite insects now, but ants were my favorite when I was younger.
I'm not surprised at all! Glad these fellas enjoyed the tasty snack :)
This is Pepper, the carpenter ant. Since she was the most recent to escape she now has the green mark of shame (and a name “Peppermint”) She is a very small minor worker. She climbed the tweezers to explore my hand. She has been returned to the colony and it will be interesting to see if she is as bold as Tulip. (another ant who has a pink dot, and who is quite a bit larger— although neither are majors.)
Pepper is the most dusty ant I’ve ever seen. Pepper, get your act together!
The other day there was a lone ant on our sliding door screen that measured three quarters of an inch long. That sounds small, but trust me, it's enormous by local ant standards.
There was a very impressive ant diversity within a stone's throw of the Cooleenup Island Field Station. And you can't throw them very far, because of the river on one side of the field station and Kitchen Lake behind it.
Like many Camponotus species, this one is known to live in nests excavated from rotten wood.
Huh. That’s a very good question @arrow-of-ravenclaw A really good question. I think it depends on the ant that bit me. Ya know, assuming no abilities were scientifically added or manipulated.
If it was a bullet ant, I’d have one helluva bite which would be an awkward power for crime fighting honestly. Like I’m some kind of vampire or something.
If it was a crazy ant, then I would have some kind of electric ability and speed. Which would be awesome.
If it was a carpenter ant, I could fly.
If it was a fire ant, I’d have one pretty painful sting. Ummm how I’d administer that, I really don’t wanna think about…
A few weeks ago I marked one of my pet ants with white paint so I could keep up with her. Turns out she (Dottie) is something of a colony leader! Exploring a new nest? Hunting a dangerous housefly? Dottie leads the way! (with narration 🔊🐜, I've used the tiktok version of the video so there would be captions, apologies for the logo)
To watch the first video about Dottie go here.