First time and a few questions

[Animalisterra]

Hi everyone! I have been watching the AC channel for quite some time now and would love to start an ant colony of my very own! I live in Arizona but am visiting Georgia and North Carolina and have been finding many queens. I recently collected 3 carpenter ant queens who had laid eggs for me but released them into hollowed out logs after watching AC video on keeping non native ants. This disappointed me as the ants seemed to be fertile and were on their way to making a colony. Now to my question: I just found another queen today and think it may be a pharaoh ant queen. Because there are native to AZ, would it be fine to bring it back?

[Casualfriday]

The short answer is, it is illegal in the US to transport live queens over state lines. No one will tell you its ok to do so.

[Batspiderfish]

Correct^

[Casualfriday]

The long answer is: Just because that genus and species are native to your area, does not mean that the bacteria and disease on the queen you caught are. colonies in the area my have developed a resistance or antibiotics(yes they do that) to the bacteria from their location. By transporting a queen to a new area you are potentially introducing that bacteria to ants in your area and could cause damage to the ecosystem. That may seem alarmist and far fetched, however I assure you that it is not.



There is plenty of time left to catch queens in your area. Nuptial flights will happen until the end of September. I myself have been hunting 6 times over the last 3 weeks and have caught queens on 3 of them. I got a late start this year but have managed to haul 7 queens.

[MichaelJones]

You do you bro, if you want to bring it back, thats up to you. But if you get any extra queens that are hving eggs, and you want to give or sell them, hit me up. I'm also from AZ

[Batspiderfish]

I would instead refer to rule 2.