The AntsCanada Ant Forum's

I have recently gotten into keeping ants and made a plan to try to catch queens on the first warm day of spring.

I got lucky and caught 10 Prenolepis imparis queen!

I have heard you can/should keep them cooler in general as opposed to other ants and that they may seem boring to some as they "don't do a lot".

About 6 out of 10 have laid eggs so far, no deaths.

Do you have any tips?

When should I move them from their test tubes?

I wish I could find this species. Seems everyone up north is finding them like crazy so I may have missed them here in TN. Great picture btw

Hi, I'm starting my own colony too and here are some of the things I learned.

The are a claustral species.

They are more polygyne the further toward the equator they are.

They like cool temperatures around 65 degrees Fahrenheit.

Check up on them after two weeks (they should have laid eggs about now)

The "hibernate" during the summer.

If you would like more information I would recommend watching this: https://youtu.be/wcSBXPsvH6o

You can move them from there test tube when they have at least 10 workers.

You could keep some queens together since they're truly polygamous. Just not all though because there's still a small chance that they will fight. And also, the queens only lay one batch of eggs per year so they are pretty slow growing with just one queen.

I had found 3 of these queens a week and a half ago, slowly i had introduced them to each other and now they are all in a tube peacefully. I'll admit for the first 30 seconds it looked like they would nip at each other but that had quickly stopped. Fast forward 1 week and now they have started to lay eggs, probably only one of the queens are laying atm, but the others shouldn't be much longer either.

My queens were found in Connecticut, in case you wanted to know to compare to the "equator" rumor, though i still haven't found solid sources on this species to be polygyny.

I was considering placing two together to see how it would work, but I am not experienced in ant keeping, and am worried about handling them wrong/too often and stressing them out as I have heard they may eat their own eggs/not lay eggs.

They have all laid eggs, is it still safe to try and move one queen into another tube?

I was looking at a minihearth from tarheel ants, would it be better to move two queens into that instead?

Or should I maybe try taping the tubes together (with air holes, of course.) and see how they react?

I would attempt to introduce them to each other when they are ready to move into a formicarium. However if you find more next year I would recommend that you put them together in a test tube setup first thing.

tasched wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 20, 2017 9:57 pm

I was considering placing two together to see how it would work, but I am not experienced in ant keeping, and am worried about handling them wrong/too often and stressing them out as I have heard they may eat their own eggs/not lay eggs.

They have all laid eggs, is it still safe to try and move one queen into another tube?

I was looking at a minihearth from tarheel ants, would it be better to move two queens into that instead?

Or should I maybe try taping the tubes together (with air holes, of course.) and see how they react?

I've placed mine in a tube together before they had laid eggs, i will say it's safe to assume it might be a bad idea to move them at this moment and instead wait until you find other queens to test it with. If you're confident, wait until they are old enough to move into a formicarium. Truthfully when my 3 start to hatch workers i'll be placing them inside a Inception Chamber, Large (3" diameter) with the random pattern, but that's my own opinion.

I have the Mini Hearth,the one with the outworld on top, i personally enjoy it though i would like to try a different layout for multiple queens.

I have some great news, one of my queen has her first set of workers.



Anyone have any tips on when to feed them, and where I might find more information on an optimal diet?

I have heard that nanitics may not need to be fed, and was hoping someone could verify if this were the case for Prenolepis Imparis.

They don't need to be fed right away, but there's no harm in ushering in the next part of their life, where they'll be foraging outside of the test tube. If you're placing the tube directly in the foraging arena, it often helps to wrap cotton around a piece of a straw or air pump tubing so that they don't need to expend energy plugging it up themselves (make note of whether or not the queen would be able to fit through). I usually begin feeding my ants when I see them tugging on the cotton, or else a little while after the first workers mature past the pale, callow stage.