The AntsCanada Ant Forum's

Hi,I am sorta new to keeping ants,Had a ant farm as a kid that did pretty good.Looking to dive into them again.

Welcome!!! I can give you one tip that really helped me: Always catch more than one queen since about 4 in 10 queens will be die or be unfertilized. You can always let them go later on. Also here is a really helpful link about other ways to find and trap queen ants! Welcome and good luck!
http://www.formiculture.com/topic/2282- ... nt-queens/

Also I forgot to add this tip: be patient with your queens. Do not peek at them to much. They could eat there eggs and not lay at if you peek at them in there test tube set ups to much. I would say peek once every 3 weeks to a month. The longer the better. Although you do want to make sure you can monitor the water portion of the test tube with out disturbing the queen. Good luck!

snakemanvet wrote:Hi,I am sorta new to keeping ants,Had a ant farm as a kid that did pretty good.Looking to dive into them again.

hey, man. welcome to the forum. good to see you getting into the hobby again. you picked the perfect time of year to get into it. there are alot of different species flying around right now in our area. good luck and remember to ask lots of questions if you have them. its the best way for everyone to take the opportunity to learn. happy anting!
here is a link to the best videos on the subject of starting the hobby, and much much more.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCONd1SNf3_QqjzjCVsURNuA

Thanks guys,do you add a few drops of water to the cotton in the tubes.

snakemanvet wrote:Thanks guys,do you add a few drops of water to the cotton in the tubes.

ummm. not exactly sure what you mean. this should help you out.

Thanks for the thread,video.Been out looking for some queens but no luck yet.I might go out tonight and look around a light pole.

A friend of mine has found a fire ant colony ,I think I don't want to mess those guys yet.I have been looking at several ant habitats and not really sure which one.I guess I need to wait to see what species I get.

fire ants are a good species to start with in my opinion. if you learn to keep fire ants contained and can keep up with how fast they grow, then other larger less aggressive species will be cake. IMO.

I might try them then,if they haven't already had their nuptial flight.What would be the best formacarium for them.