So I'm cooking dinner for the kids and this fly just keeps buzzing around all over the place. I was like right, I know what's happening to you, you great annoying buzzing blah!!!
So I spent a few minutes with a piece of kitchen roll and my eagle eyed 3 year old daughter and we finally get the fly wrapped in the kitchen roll, still buzzing. It'll obviously just fly away if I try and put it in with the ants, and I can't bug spray it to kill it...it'd kill the ants too! So I boil up a small pan of water, drop the kitchen roll in with the fly in it (instant kill) and leave it in there for about 20 seconds to kill any bugs or whatever the little bogger might be carrying. I figured there are only 8 workers so wanted to make it as easy as possible for them to eat, so I chopped little fly in half so Betty's mini mes could get straight to the gooey centre (yummy!!!), dropped it in the feeding bowl and waited...
WOW DID THEY LOVE IT!!!!
It took the little worker who is always out scavenging about 3 minutes to find it. Within a few more minutes the back up scavenger was there too. So I started filming. They were clearly trying to move it...my battery died before they managed it! So I put my phone on charge and figure they'd been at it for ages already and not even got it out the feeding bowl, never mind lifting it up into the nest. It couldn't hurt to leave them a little while and get the kids in bed and all that...WRONG! I come back, phone charged and ready to go...and the fly half is already in the nest. And the ants are going a little bit mental in the test tube. So I propped up the phone, zoomed in and pressed record.
I got about 2 hours of footage showing the ants moving the fly around, getting the larvae to feed, feeding the Queen, carrying the larvae around (first time I have seen them do this so was very excited for that too). So I banged the footage in video editor and had it auto trim to 10 minutes to show you. The video was too large to upload in Blogger so I had to YouTube it to provide you with a link
I stayed up late watching and then went to bed. By morning they had put it in the end of the test tube. When I got back from taking the kiddies to school it had been dropped out the end 😂
This is a few days ago now, and since then the ants have been super quiet. They are obviously in a food coma lol! I've offered other foods in their bowl but have only once in the last few days even seen my scavenger out, and that was super briefly!
Until they're more obviously looking for something, I'm gonna keep some protein jelly in the food bowl just incase.
Before I go, quick colony update...still 8 workers with a few larvae and eggs. Got a nice picture of the brood...
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