I used to live in Kent and although I only had a medium size garden, it didnt stop me culturing really large nests of Formica sanguinea and Formica rufa. On one particular occassion a large wood ant nest decided to move out of the garden and settle in an alley at the back.
This was fine especially as the kids in that house took great delight in tormenting them. Anyway, the nest became very strong and foragers would infest my garden and all the other gardens in my block. In the meantime I had bred up a supercoloy of the blood red ant numbering in excess of 20,000 very large sanguinea and around 10,000 formica rufa auxilliaries. This nest was extermely belligerant and one day decided to attack the large rufa nest in the alley!
The sanguinea army came out as a thick column and took more than an hour to march out of the garden! I counted more than 16,000 ants and large numbers of rufa (25%) accompanied the blood reds. The counting became difficult towards the end because large numbers of pseudo-scouts kept doubling back on themselves.
Anyway - the sanguinea ended up totally surrounding the rufa nest, which is the only time Ive known them to do this, and butchered all of the defenders including all the Queens. Again, this was very unusual and most of the defenders usually escape with their lives.
The sanguinea took two whole days to empty the nest of all its treasure and when I took stock, the carnage was unbelievable. Large balls of dead wood ants and blood red ants were rolled up together in the alley with the wood ant dead outnumbering the attackers by approximately 5 to 1 (presumably some of these were allies of the sanguinea).
Tags: Kent | In the Field | Rufa | Sanguinea
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