The Back Story
The Knickerbocker Glories are a colony of Camponotus nicobarensis purchased from British Ants in 2017. I named the queen BeyANTce and obsessed about this colony as it was our very first bought colony. At the time, we had a few test tubes of native UK species comprising mainly just single queens (I think there was a multi-queen Myrmica sp. set up and a dual-queen Formica fusca colony) with one or two workers.
BeyANTce and her girls came in this test tube but soon had to move house as things got crowded!
BeyANTce came with a few workers and for the first year or so, they were housed in various Antz for All modules. As each worker eclosed, we all got very excited. They have enjoyed a number of upgrades in terms of housing, as one of our largest colonies. Last year, in 2019, they began the year in a large acrylic tank with an Antz for All natural nest and an AntKit size 2 acrylic nest in it (I’m working on my nest extraction skills!). I upgraded them to a new, huge LC Ants arena with a size 1 ytong nest, but it all became unwieldy as I connected up the new bits and the stubborn ants refused to move out, but they did enjoy the new space!
Unfortunately for the ants, us humans also wanted an upgrade and in October 2019, we got started on some building works that meant that the room they were in was smashed up (along with much of the rest of the house!). They’ve been shuffled to somewhere not very handy and despite the air purifiers, I think the population has remained fairly stagnant or even dropped a little, but we have big plans for them this year!
And Now…
I haven’t seen Queen BeyANTce in a while, but that’s not really surprising, I suppose. There are plenty of hiding spaces in there. I’ll track their progress on here and hopefully we’ll see these girls grow to be an even bigger colony! I’m planning on moving them (properly!) into a larger set up that will be easier to look after and more contained. So they’ll be moving house this year and will also be given a new bigger nest.
Stay tuned for more regular updates from the Knickerbocker Glories!