Formicarium:notes on a colony of Lasius-like garden ants, kept under glass

14 June. Lifted the paving stone by the water butt at four o’clock. Workers boiling out, brood carried below within the minute. Took the queen and some hundreds of workers on the trowel.

2 July. Settled. They scorn bread but will cross the whole book for sugar. The first to find it runs home crooked; those who follow run straighter, and by the fiftieth it is a road.

antennaheadmesosomapetiolegaster
worker, from above · × 14

The rule, as far as I can make it out —

  1. Going out, each lays a thread of home-scent.
  2. Laden, she lays food-scent, and follows home-scent back.
  3. The idle follow food-scent. All scent fades; only the busy road is kept.

crumbs carried home: 0 · ants out: 0 · longest road: — cm

Observations, this afternoon

    ALDERWICK & SONS · FIELD BOOK N° 4 · FEINT RULED · 96 LEAVES 36
    Colony 3collected under a paving stone · queen marked red
    lime, from the path 37
    ALDERWICK · HB

    sugar spoon: tap the paper to leave a pile

    watching at