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Ever wondered what it would be like to be the vast and unimaginable intelligence ruling over a world? Love bees but hate honey? Keeping ants is a fun and rewarding hobby, with start-up cost being next to nothing. A set up can range from a test tube and some tupperware, to vast and intricate networks of tubing and specialist glass cases.  I’ve been keeping ants on and off for about 15 years, and my lockdown madness has been to start getting back into the hobby. Right now I have a few wee colonies, but I’m scaling up and thought I’d document the process. Ants are amazing because they are the classic example of eusociality. That’s when a group of animals is able to live together and specialise into specific roles for their colony, including reproduction (in fact, having reproduction be a specialised role is what defines eusociality from regular sociality). This strategy is amazing powerful, and has lead to ants absolutely dominating most land ecosystems in terms of biomass. You can find ants that ranch aphids, farm fungus, enslave other ants. By making a desktop enclosure, you can watch all of this nonsense first hand. Getting started is easy, as the most important piece of equipment in ant keeping is the humble plastic test tube, available in bulk from Amazon or many other outlets. Simply fill the bottom quarter or third with water and push a soaked wad of cotton wool down to plug it up. If water has leaked into the botton of the test-tube let it dry out for a while (or use some kitchen paper to soak up the excess). Add your queen ant (bought online, or caught during a nuptial flight), plus any brood into the tube, and then seal the top of the test-tube with a piece of dry cotton wool. Viola! This is the classic test-tube colony and it’s able to sustain a young colony until it’s ready to start foraging. Even then, the test-tube will be able to act as the queen’s chamber until the colony outgrows it. Cut a piece of tin foil to wrap around the living space. Ants are generally more comfortable nesting in the dark, so this should help them feel at home. Lastly, add a piece of bluetak or modelling putting to stick the tube down. This stops the test tube rolling around and falling off shelves.  Here’s an example (ignore the bits of apple I’ve put in there, I was a bit slow moving them into another container). A new queen will feed her first set of young by producing a fluid from her body and feeding it to them mouth to mouth. She has enough energy stores in her body to raise a first generation without any need to forage. Once that first generation of workers is ready, they’re going to start foraging for food to feed to the queen, and to new larvae that will eventually replace them. The basic foraging set-up is just placing the test-tube inside a container that you can ant-proof. A layer of soil, sand or gravel in the base will help the ants feel more comfortable and be a nicer looking set-up. Food is then placed in a serving container, and changed every few days. When the colony is small, you can usually avoid escapes by just being quick with the lid. Once you have a decent number a layer of fluon (available online) or talc mixed in alcohol can create a layer that ants have trouble crossing.  And that’s us away. You have a small and functional colony of ants on the go. Workers will go out and forage for food, and feed protein they find to the queen (who’ll use it to generate eggs) and to the larvae (who’ll grow up into new workers). Depending on the species, this colony can live for many years, and grow to hundreds or even thousands of workers. I’ve gone in very little detail above, but more in depth guide are available. My personal favourite is https://www.antnest.co.uk/setting-up-ant-farm/ . My colonies: At the moment I’m keeping two species, Lasius niger (the common european black pavement ant), and Messor barbarus (the common European seed eater ant). These are also the recommended starter species in the European area. They are hardy species with few strict requirements in terms of temperature or humidity. Lasius niger appreciates a bit of insect prey, so it’s a little more complicated to feed, although you can get away with egg or leftover meat. I keep a colony of mutant wingless fruitflies as prey animals and that suits them fine. Messor can be fed with store bought mixed seeds, with the occasional dead insect or egg to give them extra protein.  This is a combination nest bought from AntKitUK (I think, not absolutely certain). I can’t find it for sale anymore, and with good reason I think. It looks good and is fairly self contained, but it’s a nightmare to maintain. I cleaned it out this year and taking it apart took an hour. I don’t have any sand in there because the hole to the nesting chamber is flush with the bottom of the arena so any sand I put in there will fall in. I’m planning on getting around that by glueing a slice of boba straw to the entrance to create a small chimney. The red perspex cover is a common trick in ant farms. Most insects can’t see into the red end of the spectrum so by using red tinted plastic you can create a space that looks dark to ants but lets us see what’s going on inside. In here I’ve got a queen Lasius niger with five workers with a few eggs.  Another offering from AntKitUK, and this one I’m extremely happy with. It’s really just an arena with a connector to a test tube, but as a set up it just works incredibly well and looks fantastic on the shelf. It has the same problem as the previous nest in that the entrance would let sand fall in, but I’ll be glueing another slice of boba straw there as well. It’s also available in a range of colours. There’s a connector socket in the base that could be used to connect this set-up to another container if I needed more room. It has a bespoke design that only fits the manufacturers connectors (which are relatively expensive) but that’s easily handled with some bodging with putty. I put another Lasius colony in here, but it’s doing extremely well with about 9 workers and loads of eggs and larvae on the way.  This is a WaKooshi modular design. I think they may be 3d printed, but I’m not certain. I’m having some terrible luck with this I’m afraid. This needs quite a bit of flat surface that I’m not able to provide one in a stable place at the moment, as my house is getting very cramped due to lockdown wfh and a toddler constantly climbing and banging things. I’ve got my Messor barbarus queen in there with some eggs and larvae. In my experience Messor queens are very sensitive to that sort of thing and have a nasty tendency to eat their eggs and larvae if they’re not happy. There’s fewer larvae in there each time, so I suspect I’ll lose this colony YouTube: There’s a surprisingly large number of ants channels online, but the only one I’ve gotten into is AntsCanada, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCONd1SNf3_QqjzjCVsURNuA who uploads frequently from his collection in the Filipines. His experience with show business lends itself to an energetic narrative about his colonies. I binged his back catalogue in one four week haze during my paternity. He also sells a wide range of what look like high quality nests. They’re a fair bit more expensive that what I’ve bought, but I might slurge on one after lockdown ends. If you have any farms of your own, please post some pictures I’m always looking for inspiration for new designs. Feel free to ask any ant questions as well – I used to research insects and I’m always happy to talk about them!
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May 3, 2020 18:17
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| # ? May 2, 2024 22:38 |
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Really interested in this. Years back I briefly cared for ant colonies at work, I might want to look into it.
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May 4, 2020 07:45
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Extremely here for this. One of my fave things about the Cincinnati zoo is their enormous leafcutter colony.
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May 5, 2020 13:58
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the yeti posted:Extremely here for this. One of my fave things about the Cincinnati zoo is their enormous leafcutter colony. A big leaf cutter colony is a thing of beauty. Extra points if they have strings hanging overhead that the ants crawl over to reach the plants, and then hang upside carry back a chunk of leaf 10 times bigger than they are. Having one of my own ranks pretty highly as a life goal, along with a model train set that runs in between rooms. I've had a crack at adding the chimneys to my colonies.  Here's the naked build. Nothing clever, nothing fancy. Just a slice of a straw and some bluetak. Then I add some mixed grade garden sand I had in the shed as a surface substrate. If this were normal times, I'd have gone to the local aquarium shop and bought some fine white sand. The black ants would have shown up a lot better against it, and everything would look a lot neater. The mixed grade has a more naturalistic look to it, so I'm not too upset about using it.  You can see a small worker hanging out on the driftwood. I think she's one of the second batch of workers that have recently hatched out. She's a fair bit larger than the first half-dozen workers, and already seems a lot more active and a bolder explorer. This colony is ramping up fast, and I'm pretty excited about it. Excited enough that I'm thinking about absolutely spoiling them when they grow out of this container. Here's a sneak peak of what I'm thinking about... 
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May 5, 2020 22:11
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Bug Squash posted:A big leaf cutter colony is a thing of beauty. Extra points if they have strings hanging overhead that the ants crawl over to reach the plants, and then hang upside carry back a chunk of leaf 10 times bigger than they are. Having one of my own ranks pretty highly as a life goal, along with a model train set that runs in between rooms. I don’t recall the exact setup other than a big enclosure for the colony and another where plants were available for them to forage on. The scale of it was wild.
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May 6, 2020 03:14
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| # ? May 2, 2024 22:38 |
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I'll keep an eye on this thread though I personally don't want to raise an ant colony because I love watching AntsCanada Ants rule
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May 7, 2020 06:13
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