The AntsCanada Ant Forum's

Pheidole colonys seem to be very social, if you havent sold them already i would try to fuse them toghether, however you must play it safely and have a back up plan if they start to fight.I sugest putting both colonys in a outworld, exposing the one who has the least amount of workers to light and see if they join forces.
Other option is to do exacly what i just said above, but insted of exposing only one colony to light, you would expose both and provide an extra test tube(Not exposed) for them to cohabitate!
No matter what you chose or do, i wish you luck!

Sound cool keep us posted

Hi, I am new. I am in Baltimore, MD. I have no ants. I want to further educate myslef before I Ant keep.

Nearly bought a gel kit and some queen less ants from Amazon. Glad I did not.

Any keepers willing to part with anything (legal of course) in the next hear or so?

Hey MikeLikesAnts.

You picked a good time to start as it is currently nuptial flight season. What kind of questions do you have? What do you want to know? I myself am a GAN farmer out of FT Meade about 25 minutes outside Baltimore so I have quite a bit of experience at this point and would be more than willing to help with any advice or questions you have. Also, welcome to the AC family.

Starting notes:

Definitely don't get the gel kits. They're terrible. Really you want to start with the test tube method, especially if you're new to raising ants. I would say get a few test tubes (I'd recommend anything from 15 to 20 mm in diameter and 150 mm in length.) These tubes are big enough that they typically won't run out of water and force you to move them into a new tube before they have enough workers to move into a founding chamber or small nest. Glass tubes hold humidity and temperature better than plastic but are also typically a little more expensive and prone to breaking. As far as nests go, you can't go wrong with most of the market ones. I obviously recommend AntsCanada first as quite honestly theirs are just the best overall for caring for ants. However, Tarheel has nice nests, just be careful as I've gotten faulty nests before that caused me to lose my ants. My ponera actually died by falling into the water chamber and drowning. I've since fixed the nest but it was a sad lesson to learn.

You can also purchase a nest from any of the GAN farmers that may have spares or their own for sale. These tend to be cheaper than AntsCanada and competitors but are often not of the same quality. Case in point, I 3D print mine, but they're not quite as nice as the nests by AntsCanada and not as natural as Tarheel, but are most definitely cheaper.

If you want to buy ants the GAN is great for that but I highly recommend trying to catch your own queen first. There really isn't a better feeling than successfully raising a colony from a queen you caught yourself. Lasius Neoniger season is coming up at the end of July too and they typically flight in massive flights around here that are quite hard to miss.

Anyway, if you have any questions feel free to post here or message me directly.

Happy Anting.