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I recently found this thread in the bottom of my bookmarks and basically binge read it. Ants are hecking cool. First of, I just want more cool ant stories and facts really. Or colony status pictures. But a bit more on point, this is the beginning of my first garden season as a house owner, and my lawn has plenty of ants, which I would have thought would annoy me, but after reading this thread mostly fascinates and excites me. I'm in Denmark, and at a wild guess, my garden is full of garden variety lasius. I have a lot of fun watching them climb a tree, but I don't really understand what they're actually collecting, especially since the path seems pretty weak (15cm or so between workers at middle trunk, and they split up onto different branches). The colony seems to be directly below the tree. Are they into flowers or something? There doesn't seem to be aphids involved from what I can see. I'm also kinda into the idea of having a colony I can see the inside of, but between my wife and my curious/destructive four year old, I don't think I'm ready for a closed system in the house. I was thinking about a hybrid setup, where I have some sort of nest in an artificial environment (with glass sides), but using the actual garden as the outworld. My main issue is how I would go about it, since I would need for the nest to be in the dark for comfort. Currently I'm thinking something with a removable side with red glass, but are there good tried and true ways of doing what I want? It obviously needs to be weather proof and also somewhat resistant to being knocked over probably. I'm imagining just grabbing a local new queen when mating season comes, so the effect on the ecosystem should be minimal. I might intervene to defend my guys from older bullies though.
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Apr 24, 2022 19:55
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 17:07 |
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I think someone mentioned pheromone trails as a possible reason. The idea being that any individual ant is basically pointless if she can't direct her sisters to the stuff she found. And it's kinda hard to leave trails in the air. Of course, honeybees get around that by dancing, but my impression is that they have a more limited interaction/understanding of their surroundings.
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Jun 8, 2022 06:26
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No alates in Denmark yet, wtf? Also I haven't found any cheap red plexiglass for my nest project, so maybe it's good. The garden ant population is pretty active though, they're undermining my greenhouse pretty badly. Like a couple of liters of sand and gravel dug out over a couple of weeks, probably by two colonies.
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Jun 26, 2022 08:02
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I'm honestly impressed with these guys, have some super boring pictures of the most boring part of my garden (I'm also trying to make it a cool place for bees and assorted other exoskeletal friends). Number one: a few weeks worth of dirt dug up by ants, after sweeping:  Number two: status the day after said sweeping, colony alpha. My wife, who is less anthusiastic, bought some stuff which is supposed to clog up their tunnels to encourage them to leave. They are giving zero fucks.  Number three and four: colony beta in the greenhouse on the same day, and a step outside with activity.   I've also found the little asslickers farming aphids on a bunch of plants, but no pictures sadly.
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Jun 26, 2022 19:31
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The antennas look like not a ant, but I'm no expert at all. Critterquest has some cool bug people too though, maybe you can ask there too, even if this thread is probably a good bet too.
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Apr 16, 2023 19:57
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I finally found a place that would sell me red acrylic glass without charging a million billion. These are technically product samples, but probably big enough for my purposes. Which of course are that I want an open air type ant colony in my garden. I'm pretty sure the "neon red" is not gonna fool any ants. The plan is to attach the glass to some kind of concrete with tunnels in and leave it outside for the local ants to find. I'm gonna seal it up against non-red light obviously. Questions: any tips on tunnel design? And should I leave it on the ground, window vertical or facing up and will in the sun be okay or do I need shade? 
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Apr 26, 2023 19:03
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Jesus, it's already that time! That made me finish up my project! Two nests, one dug by me (shallow one), one enthusiastically dug by my 5 year old. The plan is to place them in the garden and introduce a no-longer-virgin-queen to each of them, probably with a bit of honey or sugar inside. I don't know if I should also cover them or dig the blocks into the ground for the best results? Also, the current residents are farming on my newish apple tree. I am not particularly into that location, go to some of my wonderful weeds instead please. 
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Jul 7, 2023 16:15
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 17:07 |
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Then I feel less bad about probably missing the nuptials now, because the plan is definitely not getting a test tube, on account of my wife being very adamant about ants being strictly outside the house, and having a random test tube in the garden with two small kids is a recipe for extremely stressed ants and maybe parents. My backup plan is basically to leave the nests somewhere and wait for someone to move in, possibly with the aid of some honey or something. But thanks for liking my little project, they're 100% inspired by this very thread. And also ants not seeing red is a great piece of trivia that I've now told friends, family and dudes at hardware stores where I attempted to buy red acrylic glass for not insane prices. The trick to that is apparently product samples, for the record.
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Jul 9, 2023 19:47
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