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Anyone else have their colony lose their brood, but still had a few workers left and the colony was fine?

Well, been about 3 weeks since my queen lost her first brood. And I assume she is still alive, since I haven't seen any dead ant parts. So any day from now to probably the next two weeks I should have more workers

I have great news

More of my Pogonomyrmex californicus have hatched, I can see two or three workers underneath carrying large larvae and some pupae. I kinda disturbed them though since I was shining a flashlight on their chamber. I won't do that again for awhile, I just wanted to see if I had any new workers...and I did.

I'm glad my queen was able to make a second batch of brood to replace her last one that got killed by mold.

Good thing my colony is doing well again, it seems really healthy too, so I doubt the queen will die...but can never know with ants.

I noticed with sand though, at least the sand I got from home depot..mold doesn't grow in it. Ants seem to like it and the only source of mold growing is from some small areas of dirt I didn't mix in properly. The mold grows to the edge of the dirt then stops where the sand begins. So that is a great thing...and the ants seem to like the sand, so it works out.

I also mentioned this on the forums here, but back on June 19th I found a whole bunch of Pogonomyrmex californicus queens crawling around. Funny thing is they look completely different than the P.californicus queen I got back in December out in the desert. The ones in the desert are wasp-like and have a black abdomen...my new queens that I caught at the beach are more ant like and a little bigger looking. It really confused me at first since all the queens are the same species but look almost completely different. Even the workers look really different.

All 5 of them are alive still...I even found one of the queens being washed up by the waves and was almost getting stepped on. I thought I was really lucky finding one, turns out there were hundreds and hundreds of queens crawling all over on the trails above the beach and I got 5 of them. It should be any time from now and about 3 weeks for more workers to hatch. My first Pogonomyrmex queen I got took almost 7 weeks for the first worker to hatch...but its gotten a lot warmer since then so hopefully it won't take as long.

I'm going to keep 2 or 3 queens if that many get workers (all I have room for, and 3 is really pushing it)...the other 2, I might let one go inside my apartment complex in the planting area the Tapinoma sessile are in. I let the T.sessile go in this area and they have done really well...but I probably won't, since it doesn't look like a Pogo type environment at all, its always moist and its all dirt and no sand. The hardest part will be trying to find a place to release the queens. Actually, I think the best place might be the Julian mountains south of me...me and my parents go thunderstorm chasing up there and there are already Harvester ants up there, I'll just have to find a place without any to release them.

I seem to have really good luck with Pogonomyrmex, at least so far. My first colony has around 8 workers now and around 10 larvae...so its doing really good. They have done lots of digging as well. Then like I said, my other queens are still alive after all this time...not one death out of the 5 of them.

My colony is growing pretty quick and eating lots. When it is time to expand my ant farm, me and my dad are going to build a 15-20 gallon aquarium for them and put it on the porch. Too expensive to buy an ant farm that size at the pet store.