The AntsCanada Ant Forum's

I dont have any test tubes and im using these instead. about 25mm wide and I usually just put a wet tissue on the bottom and rewet it once a week

The nice thing about a test tube setup is it keeps disturbances of the queen to a minimum. Disturbing her creates a lot of stress and she’s less likely to lay eggs or even live if the environment isn’t ideal. Having to rewet the tissue means you have to disturb the queen, and be a little invasive into her space. That is a less than ideal position you want to put a queen ant in. Test tubes are extremely cheap and they most likely sell them at your nearest craft store, so if I were you I would just pay the extra $5 and get some test tubes.

The problem I see with that container is that it is very wide, having that your going to have a hard time keeping a reserve amount of water in it and also there is a high chance that it may leak past the cotton and drown the queen inside. As colo3000 stated you can go to a craft store and find them, you can also find them at stores that have the little science projects for kids (they are usually sold in pairs for the kids projects) big thing is if they are made of glass be careful when you are handling them because one slip and the tube could hit something and break.

Also as stated you want to avoid disturbing the Queen while she is laying eggs and tending to the new brood, if she gets stressed she may never lay any eggs or even worse a stressed Queen has been known to eat the eggs also. On the average you set up the founding test tube with water and place it in a dark warm place and leave it alone for at least 3-4 weeks with out disturbing her.

AntNoobster wrote: ↑

Sat May 05, 2018 7:37 pm

I dont have any test tubes and im using these instead. about 25mm wide and I usually just put a wet tissue on the bottom and rewet it once a week

I used to have some colonies living in similar setups (I didn't have enough test tubes at the time), and they all successfully spawned tetramorium colonies. They did die over winter, though , probably because they weren't insolated enough. I do think that proper test tubes are better, but don't force a move if the queen(s) have any brood without workers.