Ttransfer Ants or not?

[Araiz1]

Hello,
I am Araiz,I have felt in love with ants by looking at the videos of AntsCanada A.K.A Mikey Bustos. Now I want to keep them. By looking at the GAN project and trying to see if any Ant farmers in my area are trying to sell ants, I came to know that Pakistan is not situated in the list at all. I am not over 18 years, as I am 14 years old, and I am not a professional ant keeper. So I wanted your help. There are like 7-8 species of ants living in my lawn and my backyard, one of them is Black Crazy Ants(B.C.A), and I want to keep them. They, Black Crazy Ants(B.C.A), live in my home and I want to transfer them to my habitat but I don't know how? There was a migration of B.C.A from outside the gate of my house going inside to the space between the bricks. I thought of them to be undefeatable as they took 7 hours to complete their migration, with more than fifty queens. It has not been a week, 80% of the colony was killed by another colony living in my house, which seemed to be of ratio 'Another colony 1:8 B.C.A.' Later the remaining B.C.A found another hole and are now living there. So I want a colony of ants living in the habitat, made by me, may it be B.C.A( which I want) or any other colony living in my lawn or backyard. Give me tips on how to make them to leave the lawn and join my habitat, or you can set a GAN farmer at Lahore particularly. Nuptual Flight are not happening these days. So please tell me how to transfer any colony to my place.


Or should I use this technique https://youtu.be/kL6RdY8iBNE (YouTube).
I want your reply.

[AntsLuxembourg]

Hello there,

Glad to hear that you want to learn more about ants. You are never too old or too young for ant-keeping but as you are a bit younger you might need to restrain yourself with hasty decisions. So I am already glad you managed to restrain yourself from just doing something that might be harmful to the ants.

So about the transfer. It would be unwise and stupid to tell you to go and break the walls those ants have decided to use as their new home. It would probably hurt the ants or even kill them.

Perhaps it would be best to wait for their next move to another area so you could try to capture some queens and workers so you could have a colony which is already a bit bigger with 2-4 queens and you could also keep catching more workers and add them to the setup.

More important would be to know what you plan on using as a setup and what you want to feed to your colony. Also perhaps if you manage to trap some of their workers or perhaps even a queen you could try to send us a picture of them and post them in our ants identification center to verify the species of the colony.

I know that some colonies might try to safe their brood if you water their nest a bit but I wouldn't recommend flooding them out since they might actually drown.

So a transfer is not impossible but should be well prepared. The habitat should also be suitable for the ants not that you get problems with keeping them.

[AntsDakota]

Hello,
I am Araiz,I have felt in love with ants by looking at the videos of AntsCanada A.K.A Mikey Bustos. Now I want to keep them. By looking at the GAN project and trying to see if any Ant farmers in my area are trying to sell ants, I came to know that Pakistan is not situated in the list at all. I am not over 18 years, as I am 14 years old, and I am not a professional ant keeper. So I wanted your help. There are like 7-8 species of ants living in my lawn and my backyard, one of them is Black Crazy Ants(B.C.A), and I want to keep them. They, Black Crazy Ants(B.C.A), live in my home and I want to transfer them to my habitat but I don't know how? There was a migration of B.C.A from outside the gate of my house going inside to the space between the bricks. I thought of them to be undefeatable as they took 7 hours to complete their migration, with more than fifty queens. It has not been a week, 80% of the colony was killed by another colony living in my house, which seemed to be of ratio 'Another colony 1:8 B.C.A.' Later the remaining B.C.A found another hole and are now living there. So I want a colony of ants living in the habitat, made by me, may it be B.C.A( which I want) or any other colony living in my lawn or backyard. Give me tips on how to make them to leave the lawn and join my habitat, or you can set a GAN farmer at Lahore particularly. Nuptual Flight are not happening these days. So please tell me how to transfer any colony to my place.


Or should I use this technique https://youtu.be/kL6RdY8iBNE (YouTube).
I want your reply.

It is best to not catch wild colonies. You should start your colony from a solely captured queen ant.

[AntsLuxembourg]

That's what I kind of said. He could try to capture a queen and some of her workers. Not the whole colony cause that might be a bit difficult. But he could try that anyway since there are no GAN Farmers arround.