It would be nice to know that there was more than one queen in there, or that they could make as many queens as they want somehow.
Since the baby powder layer, and the vaseline layer were not stopping the ants from climbing out, I wiped as much of it as I could off the walls, and even sprayed a little water on it and wiped it off with a paper towel. I don't know how thick the layers are supposed to be to stop ants from getting out of the bucket. I thought the thicker the vaseline the better, but they just walked over it like nothing was there.
And the powder I thought was working okay until I added more, and I guess I turned it into pavement or something and they walked on it too. There is the possibility that I covered the vaseline in powder or maybe dust and dirt and that is why it didn't work, but I don't know. Maybe its supposed to just be a thin coating on the walls.
Or maybe it won't work on bucket walls. I wiped it all off because the ants have gone pretty inactive again, or they mostly climbed out in the last couple days.
There still are a few that walk around carrying dirt balls, but maybe now that I give them so much food all the time they don't need to walk around looking so much. Or they are cold, now that its colder and draftier than it was a few days ago.
I bought some thin plastic tubes, I'm not sure what they are for but were in a plumbing supply section at Lowe's and are the right width, that I can cut into sections and glue into the sides of the buckets and then attach 3/8" vinyl tubing to like everyone else uses (well, I don't know the width of the tubing anyone uses but that is what I bought a couple weeks ago anyway) to attach outworlds and things like that.
I can think of a couple problems with having an ant colony in a bucket, like maybe the bottom layer is saturated with water and putrefying, and I am uncertain what to do about that. Anyway, the problems I see are with ventilation of the dirt. If I did it over then I would put gravel or something on the bottom with a layer of something to keep out the dirt on top, and a tube to suck out any water that trickled through all the dirt into the gravel, and then the dirt over that. But, I have a queen ant so that is all that matters at the moment!
I am imagining putting a hole near the bottom with tubing connected to it so the ants can come out the bottom if they want and walk thru the tubing to the top, and that way I could see if there was water sitting in it too, and drain it out if there was. The top is dry from the light shining on it. I never turn off the light, but they seem to only be a little active at certain times of day and not all the time.