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WELL, then [ants, work]
Jul. 19th, 2024 01:46 pmLast week, I asked S if he would be so kind as to mail me my traditional ant-collecting hat, which I'd forgotten in the flurry of packing. Well, that plus a couple other things, to really justify the effort.
The hat arrived yesterday, so I jokingly took a photo and posted that now I was finally ready for "flying ant day," as a recent New York Times article put it (I guess that people in the UK observe this sacred holiday?).
Well, then last night, the weather radar and the automated rainfall gauges started to strongly hint that there might be rain falling in just the right place. I tried to recheck the gauges this morning when I got up at 3:50 am, but the page wouldn't load (I hear there were maybe some tech outages?).
"Well heck," I said to myself, "If it turns out that this is a good time to go and I just roll over and go back to sleep, I'm going to be really mad. If I show up and I'm too early, at least I'll know." So, 4:10 am and I was on the road to Tucson.
There was a surprising amount of traffic on the road at that time of morning, more than I recall seeing on previous years.
When I exited the Interstate and started to traverse across northern Tucson, I wasn't very optimistic. I had the windows rolled down and could tell the air was dry.
But lo, as soon as I got to my usual spots, a swarm!
Most of my photos are on the DSLR camera; after collecting the queens, I basically hightailed back to Tempe to get the queens painted and then set up in nests.
Nest setup in progress:
I decided to set up the queens either in pairs, or in groups of 6. I gave each queen a colored paint mark so I can tell who's who in each nest. I will monitor the division of labor and a number of other things as these colonies start to grow.
Most of that work will begin in earnest tomorrow. For right now, I am SO ready for a nap.
The hat arrived yesterday, so I jokingly took a photo and posted that now I was finally ready for "flying ant day," as a recent New York Times article put it (I guess that people in the UK observe this sacred holiday?).
Well, then last night, the weather radar and the automated rainfall gauges started to strongly hint that there might be rain falling in just the right place. I tried to recheck the gauges this morning when I got up at 3:50 am, but the page wouldn't load (I hear there were maybe some tech outages?).
"Well heck," I said to myself, "If it turns out that this is a good time to go and I just roll over and go back to sleep, I'm going to be really mad. If I show up and I'm too early, at least I'll know." So, 4:10 am and I was on the road to Tucson.
There was a surprising amount of traffic on the road at that time of morning, more than I recall seeing on previous years.
When I exited the Interstate and started to traverse across northern Tucson, I wasn't very optimistic. I had the windows rolled down and could tell the air was dry.
But lo, as soon as I got to my usual spots, a swarm!
Most of my photos are on the DSLR camera; after collecting the queens, I basically hightailed back to Tempe to get the queens painted and then set up in nests.
Nest setup in progress:
I decided to set up the queens either in pairs, or in groups of 6. I gave each queen a colored paint mark so I can tell who's who in each nest. I will monitor the division of labor and a number of other things as these colonies start to grow.
Most of that work will begin in earnest tomorrow. For right now, I am SO ready for a nap.
