Do we have any ant keepers on here? I have recently started collecting queens and have a handful of Pheidole bicarinata, Lasius neoniger, Dorymyrmex bureni, and Brachymyrmex patagonicus.
One of my Pheidole queens is about to have her first worker
Others have a good brood going:
And the Lasius neoniger queens I collected look pretty good
Oh wow how cool are they. How did you acquire the queens ?
I used to keep Leaf Cutter Ants (both Atta and Acromyrmex species) in a professional capacity.
I went out and collected them, mostly by using a blacklight on a sheet after dark. There are other species that need more active collection.
Tried having an ant farm once. But they never grew or raised anything. So let them go.
Most of the commercial ant farms have a certificate for live ants, the ones they send you are a few harvester ant workers so they wont reproduce. The best way to get started is to either collect a queen in a test tube setup like this:
The water soaks through the cotton and gives the developing colony the moisture they need to get going. This does depend on whether or not the queen is fully claustral though. If they aren’t fully claustral they will need to be fed while their brood is growing.
Very cool what you have going on here! I myself gave up on ants when my fire ant colony broke out of there enclosure haha.
I’m staying away from stinging ants. I don’t want to deal with that situation, I’ve stepped on a nest and had some sting my ankle and leg before and it’s not pretty.
Looks great! I recently captured a carpenter ant queen that has just laid eggs. It’s gonna be fun watching your success with these guys! Good luck!
