The AntsCanada Ant Forum's

I feel like this will just be a reiteration of what people have said in these forums before, but if this helps anyone it'll be worth it.

So, my first big mistake was last year when I caught about 17 queens. I put them into plastic test tubes that I got for a super low price. I thought that I could leave my ants over winter in these and they'd be fine, since they don't consume any water while they're hibernating. The tubes were so cheap that the water was able to escape through the plastic, and I lost almost every queen.

Second big mistake: Some of the queens I caught laid eggs, and I thought that it would be a good idea to put their test tubes into small containers so I could easily put aluminum in and they could just poke their heads out and grab a little honey.
When these ants went into hibernation, EVERY SINGLE QUEEN got mold. I happened to check in on them midwinter and managed to save one of them.

These mistakes were made before I found these forums... Felt like the graveyard was the place to talk about this.

tl;dr: Use glass test tubes instead of cheap plastic ones for your queens AND do not put queens without workers into even the smallest outworld.

I am so sorry. I have the cheap test tubes too but they seem to work for me. You just didn't check on them enough which is weird because most people check on them too much. but i agree no workers, no out world. Unless you have a semi-claustral queen.

Was dead set on not checking them throughout winter so I wouldn't mess anything up.

They probably would have barely been bothered by you checking on them in the winter since they would be so lethargic from the cold temperatures.

Jadeninja9 wrote: ↑

Sat May 05, 2018 2:26 pm

They probably would have barely been bothered by you checking on them in the winter since they would be so lethargic from the cold temperatures.

Like I said. It's not a mistake I'll make again.

I getcha