The Messor Barbarus Queen has today produced another fine worker, this time though I suspect she may be a major.  She is as big as some of the other ants already, so its my guess that she will turn into one big ant.  Here is a picture of it so you  can get a good idea of what she is gonna turn out like.  So now, I have 13 MB's and the queen (how long till another goes missing I wonder).  I counted the eggs as well, and there were 12 larvae to pupae and a bunch of eggs that were to clumped together to count.

 My lovely Myrmica Ruginodis are doing well (but thats what we've come to expect from them).  I fed them another cricket today, and they went ballistic.  I think they were hungary.  They immediately began taking the legs into the nest for rapid feeding of the young.  Yesterday I put some honey in the feeding basin, and this must have been a welcome treat because the workers drank it up during the day.  I had to remove all of the grass that had sprouted from my spilled grass seed.  This was a pain but had to be done, it made the basin look untidy...

 This is a picture of my Lasius Niger Queen and her eggs.  I managed to successfully transfer her from the tupaware tub she was in, into this old antstore test tube.  It had the tetramorium caespitum in it previously.  She is a lovely little queen, and is constantly looking after the eggs and larvae.  I believe its only a matter of days now until we see the first of the new born workers milling around.  

The Tetramorium Caespitums continue to be shy little buggers. Today however I actually saw 2 seperate ones.  Now this might not seem like many, but trust me, when you've only seen 1 during the last 2 weeks its nice to know that 1 of the others is still alive...and it that one is, then theres a great chance that all of them are.

More news soon.