Luxury Ant Farm: The mANTsion

Step 11 Populating the ant farm

In order to start this first ant farm I decided to buy ants from a supplier online. Fifty ants are currently on order from AntsAlive. They are due to arrive in the next few days and I will post pictures of their tunneling when they start digging.

AntsAlive reports that the ants could last anywhere from one month, to up to a year - although ants living for such a long time is "very unusual". Most of the ants will probably die in three months, at which point we can make changes to the ant farm and try catching some ants ourselves.

It's possible to catch ants in the wild. If you know what you are doing you might even be able to find a queen. If you are lucky enough to find one and get it into your ant farm then the ants can reproduce and they won't die after a few months. This is quite an achievement in the ant farm world, and so once things are up and running, maybe I will go ant hunting and see what I can find.

If things work out, a "How to hunt ants" instructable could be on the horizon...

Comments

[Omensign]

My father and I used to make ant farms when I visisted in the summertime, including collecting our own ants. We would begin by looking for a type of large red ant, I have no idea what the specific scientific name is. Afterwhich my father had no problem letting them crawl all over his skin before dusting them off in the prepared jar ant-farm. I was too afraid to do that and I would collect the eggs that popped up instead. The farm would last virtually all summer before the ants would stop appearing in the winter. Eventually my dad took the jar out and emptied it in a field only to discover a giant ball of ants still living in the center. This didn't always happen and future projects didn't seem as successful. I've always been fascinated by ant farms and simply reading this article makes me want to bash one up. Maybe a wall mounted ant farm.