After a very hard winter diapause where I lost nearly 50 workers due to a lack of humidity, the colony recovered quickly and at this speed the plaster formicarium won’t be able to accomodate the colony at the end of the year: it’s time to build a new formicarium, this time in aerated concrete, a very good material to host them.
Areated concrete is a very soft material and can be easily carved with a screwdriver and you can use water-based acrylic colors to color it.
I will use the top as outworld and the sides as 4 nearly independent vertical nests. Only the first one has a direct entrance from the outworld and each one of them is connected with the neighbor with a single tunnel.
A big vertical screw intercepts this connection to block it until the colony has occupied all the space at its disposal. In this way the formicarium will slowly grow and the ants won’t be stressed out and won’t use the empty rooms as rubbish dump.
To close it, I’ve attached four plexiglass plates with non-toxic silicone (the one meant to be used for aquariums) and joined the corners with an angular.
To avoid escapes, I’ve also added a partial ceiling on top by carving a square shape into a fifth plexiglass sheet, placed on top of the structure and also reinforced with angulars, and then passed another round of silicon in all the junctures after the (too much) silicon moved the frames a little bit.
After a couple of days I’ve started the transfer: since the old formicarium was small I simply put it inside the new one, removed the light protection and waited. Two days passed without movement, but when the old nest started lacking humidity (I stopped humidifying it it) the first workers started to transfer. On day 4 the queen was already in the new home and on day 6 all workers (except a couple) were there!
Now the colony counts around 250 workers and the first side is already nearly full! I think that I’ve underestimated the growth of a Formica cunicularia colony and I think I will need another formicarium as I think they may fill all 4 sides at the end of the next year
