The AntsCanada Ant Forum's

So three of my tetramorium queens have their first nanitic workers- yay! Now that I have to start feeding them, though, I've been looking for another dark place that's a little easier to access than where I have the rest of my queens currently. That's where the titular cigar box comes in.

I picked it up at a garage sale and it's a wonderful size and shape to keep my nanitic colonies test tube set ups. I was just gonna put them in and then I remembered something in the back of my head- isn't tobacco supposed to be a natural insecticide? Dang!

Well the box is really old and doesn't even smell like tobacco, but just in case I washed and scrubbed the heck outta it with dish soap and set it out to dry... That's when I remembered something else- dawn is an ant repellent! I literally used it last year to keep local colonies from crossing the threshold into my apartment! Argh!

Remembering that I took the box to the shower and rinsed it like I've never rinsed anything before. The box is wood though and wood is porous. Will any amount of washing be good enough? How sensitive are ants to these things? Do I have to give up on my dream of keeping my test tubes in this box?

Thank you for the info in advance ha ha.

I have kept ants in test tubes in them before. But opening it up just to check on one queen still disturbs all the others. My most resent test tube storage is a wood log with a bunch of drilled holes that i sit the tubes in.