Questions about ant keeping / need advice

[hunter452]

Hello everyone! Watching AntsCanada has made me interested in a colony of my own but I could use some help!

1. I am in Georgia and currently my work will potentially keep me away from my ants for anywhere between weeks or a month at a time! What would be an easy species to maintain?

2. Once I get the start up, do I need to maintain live food for the ants or do is that for more experienced ant keepers? Would it be better to just buy crickets etc at a local pet store?

3. I am trying to not to get any invasive species but I’m not very well educated on that stuff. Google has showed me a bunch of invasive species but not native ants (or if it has it hasn’t labeled them as such… mainly how to get rid of ant invasions )… what’s a good website to learn about local ants?

I appreciate any help and advice! If I have any more questions I’ll add them as the day goes on but this has been my thoughts so far! Thank you in advance for any help you all are able to offer!

[bugging3out]

Hi I am happy to help I have been keeping ants for 1 year and a month. I have been watching videos I am quite Educated on keeping ants.

Answer to question 1: the easygoing ant species in your area in probably Pogonomyrmex badius or also known as the harvester ant. Here are the reasons why they are easy going: they don’t grow fast but they eat seeds and can live on seeds their entire life. So give em’ a bunch seeds and if u want to take a break of feeding them or your on vacation, just give them a massive amount of seeds and you won’t have to feed them in a long time. They sting tho!

Answer to question 2: if you have these harvester ants you just have to order grass seeds or any kind of small seed from the store to feed them.

Answer to question 3: I would go to antwiki.org since they have a map on every species if it’s native or invasive luckily harvester ants aren’t invasive. Green is native red is invasive and yellow is seen but not for certain it’s there and brown is dubious meaning the ant rarely comes out. And the little dots are meaning that it’s a lot of them.

Best, Bugging3out

[hunter452]

Thank you for your advice and taking the time to help me! You’re 100% right it’s not invasive and is indeed native around my location!! I really appreciate this!

I apologize for the late reply, life has been busy but once again thank you for taking the time to help me out! I’ll look up when this ant species mates and try to catch me one if the local ant GAN farmers don’t get any queens anytime soon!

Hope you are well!

[SYUTEO]

Hi I am happy to help I have been keeping ants for 1 year and a month. I have been watching videos I am quite Educated on keeping ants.

Answer to question 1: the easygoing ant species in your area in probably Pogonomyrmex badius or also known as the harvester ant. Here are the reasons why they are easy going: they don’t grow fast but they eat seeds and can live on seeds their entire life. So give em’ a bunch seeds and if u want to take a break of feeding them or your on vacation, just give them a massive amount of seeds and you won’t have to feed them in a long time. They sting tho!

Answer to question 2: if you have these harvester ants you just have to order grass seeds or any kind of small seed from the store to feed them.

Answer to question 3: I would go to antwiki.org since they have a map on every species if it’s native or invasive luckily harvester ants aren’t invasive. Green is native red is invasive and yellow is seen but not for certain it’s there and brown is dubious meaning the ant rarely comes out. And the little dots are meaning that it’s a lot of them.

Best, Bugging3out

I think dubious means a wrong ID, this can be proven if you look at the site for Odontomachus haematodus.

[AM1C39]

It means they are not native to that area but they originally thought they where.