The AntsCanada Ant Forum's

It's been a loooong time since I last posted on this forum, or even thought about ants, but a golden opportunity presented itself last evening. I was out watering some of the plants in the back yard, when I noticed something crawling on the patio. An ant queen! I went inside, quickly grabbed a jar, and captured her! Curious to see if there were more, I began looking around, and soon found another one by a bush! Put her in a jar too.

That evening, I prepped some test tubes with the water and cotton setup, and transferred both queens into a test tube of their own. I'm willing to bet heavily that both are Camponotus queens. One still has her wings, the other does not. The final setup they are in right now is a cardboard box with some foam padding in it, resting on the patio outside. My parents will not let me take the box and tubes inside and leave them in my closet for fear of escape and/or infestation.

My wingless queen seems fairly chill in her test tube, only moving about frantically if you really disturb her. The winged one is very agitated, however. She gets upset if you even touch the box, and then begins madly scurrying and gnawing on her cotton stop. Right now, I'm a little anxious. I don't know what they'll do! Will they chew through their cotton stops? Will the temperature fluctuations from being outside kill them? Is the humidity too high in their containers? Maybe I should partially bury the test tubes at an angle so that feel more comfortable. I've done some research on how to care for these queens, but any help would be seriously appreciated!

P.S. Not sure if my parents are cool with an ant farm yet. If they DO lay eggs, things get complicated.

Thanks for any tips/help!

-Antlover84

hope everything works out.

Yes...camponotus will chew through their cotton...unfortunately I just found that out today. She was chewing at it a little bit the first day that I put her in there. I figured, well, even if she continues, it should hold her for a couple days. While trying to give her space but also trying to make sure she's comftorbale, I waited 24 hours to check on her. All I found was an empty test tube though :/ I guess I should have put the tube in a box or something instead of just laying a rag over it and putting it in a dark closet. I have one more, but she doesn't seem to like her test tube either. 2nd year trying to start an ant colony, hopefully this last one works out.

Put the test tube in a Tupperware bowl with a lid that has some small air holes in it. You can also use a alcohol/baby power mixture that you can apply around the upper part of the bowl to cover yourself if this one gets thru the cotton also. Just a thought.

my carpenter ant queen got out too last year. but it was from pushing the cotton out not chewing through it. since then i have learned camponotus = extra cotton.