A Bee and an Ant

Canada Thistle (Cirsium arvense)

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Ant Pupae

The woods here have been neglected all the years I lived here alone. John is cleaning them up and cutting down the cottonwoods and poplars, which gives the sugar maple room and light. He is, in fact, creating a nice sugarbush. Early July, John cut a very large double cottonwood. Two cottonwoods had fused together or one had been cut and shoots grew up and into the original tree. But in the notch about 10 feet off of the ground, in soil that had accumulated, was a nest of ants. When the tree came down, the colony quickly gathered up the pupae and moved them underground. The pupae are grub-like baby ants in a cocoon. My favorite photo is the one below, when I was able to freeze the motion of the ants with the pupae while the other ants hurriedly led the way to the ground. I have submitted these photos to antweb.org for identification.

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Milking Aphids on Milkweed

An ant tending its aphid farm on milkweed

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Formica subsericea

This photo was taken in 2007 but the ants were only identified today at bugguide.net. The identifier said that this is "a common eastern North American species, here recognizable by its slightly silky sheen (as the specific epithet suggests) and rounded rear margin of the head." In the references I read on the web, these ants are also slave holders. I only just learned about slave ants this past summer from Summer World: A Season of Bounty. Summer is coming. I urge you to click the link and buy the book in preparation for this coming summer. It is a valuable guide to the forests and meadows of New England.

I found an ant blog today at http://www.antweb.org/antblog. Go check it out and see if you want to subscribe to the RSS feed like I did.

Ants Set

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Black Ant

Ant Set

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The End of the Aphid Farm

The once flourishing aphid farm on the rhubarb stalks has disappeared completely. I wish I knew why and how they dispersed. I assume that when the rhubarb stalks died, the ants, aphids and spiders found a place to go to live. But it is a mystery. Did they leave all at once? Or a few at a time?

But when we were looking for spittle bugs on Saturday, Wingnut did find another tiny ant farm out back in the field. We have to keep an eye on it to see how (or if) it grows. Tomorrow I will cut down the dead stalks. Observation is over. It was a great experience in viewing nature.

When clicked, these photos will open, full size, in a new window.

Technorati Tags: aphid farm, ants, honeydew
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The Aphid Farm Today

I hope these photos are a bit better than the last. The aphid farm is growing huge. The ant nest under the rhubarb is huge. If you step on the grass near the ant nest, you are immediately attacked and bitten by these tiny ants. Tiny spiders seem to be an important part of the aphid farm. When clicked, these photos will open, full size, in a new window.

Technorati Tags: aphid farm, ants, honeydew
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The Aphid Farm

The photos with adult ants have not been processed in Photoshop.

The small black oval creatures are the aphids.
These photos have been manipulated in Photoshop so that I could see the aphids.

Earlier this spring, I decided to let one of my rhubarb plants go to seed because I wanted to see the process and because I don't like yellow rhubarb. This week, Wingnut and I found that there were hundreds of ants on the rhubarb stalk. We have been trying to photograph the ants but it's been difficult. The light and weather have not cooperated. I still have problems focusing the Canon. Today I finally got some shots that were good enough for me to see what was going on on the rhubarb stalk. I had to manipulate the shadows and highlights to see, and I saw a huge aphid farm.

When I need information on bug behavior, I go to Bug Girl's blog. She keeps up with the latest research and this is what I found: ants may actually drug the aphids in order to control them so that they can harvest the aphid honeydew. Go and read more at the blog. I will go back out and try to get better photos.

When clicked, these photos will open, full size, in a new window.

Technorati Tags: aphid farm, ants, honeydew
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