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Novomessor Cockerelli - Desert Harvester

Novomessor Cockerelli - Long legged Harvester

 

While found in rather sparse desert like areas, Novomessor can travel vast distances in their conquest for food. They are extremely active, painful and frightfully aggressive too. They are found with nest entrances under stones and often surrounded by gravel.

 

Their nests are deep and have great gradients for controlling the scorching sun, this is needed in desert environments to find the water table and maintain humidity within the nest.

 

Everything about this species is finely tuned and designed for life under the sun. They prefer forraging in the evening and morning when its not so hot, they work individually for speed but in groups to bring larger prey to the nest as quickly as possible. They are very very fast in movement speed and they have great trail based forraging to bring back as much food in the shortest time possible.

 

They are a harvesting ant species but do not make ant bread and consume seeds directly, They are in fact well suited to all foods as they would scavange anything in the wild from seeds to insects, plant flesh to small animals who were not so lucky in the sun.

 

Colony Size

Excess of 5,000 workers

Monogyne - One queen per nest

Queen is semi claustral – she needs sugars and proteins as soon as larvae is present

Temperature

Heated 27 to 29 degrees

Humidity

60-75% in nest

Hibernation

Diapause for 2 or 3 months at 20 degrees.

Polymorphic (Different size casts)

No

Sting

No 

Bite

Yes

Diet

Seeds, Nuts, Grains, proteins, Sugars, Water.

Nest Type

Natural, Ytong.

Size

Queen – 11mm

Worker - 7-9.5mm

Polymorphic - No

Novomessor Cockerelli - Desert Harvester

PriceFrom £54.99
  • It is illegal to release this colony into the wild in the UK, if you can no longer care for your colony please contact us immediately.

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