The AntsCanada Ant Forum's

Yeah, like I said with superworms in particular it's very cheap because you really only feed them fruits and oat meal. Just give them a decent bit of space and any time you spot pupae take them out and just leave them in a pill box or something similar until they become completely black beetles. I h...

Crickets for Ireland anyway are the cheapest option but boy do those guys know how to smell bad in a matter of minutes. I decided to keep darkling beetles and bought two boxes of superworms from two different stores to lower the chance of them coming from the same gene pool. They do not smell and ar...

Wait, did you provide food for the queen and workers? A sugary source like honey? Proteins are mainly for larvae and to help the queen produce more eggs but they need sugary food to keep their energy levels up..

Was the food fresh? The fact that all of them stopped laying eggs suggests the food could have been bad or out of date of possibly spayed with something if store bought?

I am really sorry this happened to you

Actually you should have done what Joe said when one or two workers are walking around. The wait for 20 plus workers is for when you are moving them from a test tube to an actual nest. Many prefer to wait until there is 50 workers as they are less skittish and more open to moving to a more suitable ...

It would not hurt to order it anyway and get it on a mid to low priority delivery. This would give the colony time to increase in numbers by the time it gets to you. Normally I would agree with the wait for 50 workers but if you are already adding more test tubes to house the colony then it might be...

I use Coco fiber and a potting soil mix from my local garden centre and I have them in a 50-50 ratio. I use it for my ants, stick insect, darkling beetles colony and my sling and I never have mold issues. I actually had a mold outbreak in my beetle enclosure bit it's was strictly on the oat meal tha...

Yeah no mold out break on the cotton or the bottom of the substrate. Maybe the water sitting there is causing the molt to produce quicker??

I actually use a Coco fiber and potting soil mix with a tiny bit of the sand it comes with, I have had no issues with the mold. Except for that one time I did not noticed a honey drop got covered in mold but on a closer examination I spotting a little bit of superworm exoskeleton in it and that clea...

Is it not the Camponotus ants that have an anti freeze type of chemical in their blood that allows them to survive on the surface during the winter months or am I getting confused with another species?

Shame not all ants from temperate regions gained that advantage.