Ant keeping tips i wish i knew when i was a beginner

Hi guys today i will be sharing with you some of the things about ant keeping i wish i knew when i was a beginner.

Many of you may have difficulties feeding your colonies in a test tube setup, worrying that there may be escapees ( i know although we keeps ants, not many of us actually dare touch one ) while feeding them .

How i usually feed my colonies is that i place the test tube setup housing the colony in a container coated with baby powder , and drop the food in a bottle cap for the workers to forage .

Here is an example of what i did-

When i was a beginner, identifying the species of smaller queen ants was tough for me. These are some of the common small species of queen ants that are found in Singapore ( its good to invest in a macro lens )-



Nylanderia 

Pheidole

Crematogaster

 Last but not least , many new hobbyist always ask if carebara males are queens due to their size .

This is a carebara queen

These are carebara males

I hope you find this helpful and all the best in ant-keeping.
Cheers!

Finding a queen ant in Singapore

A very popular question this time of the year is, "How do I find a queen ant?"

As with many things, finding a queen ant requires a lot of patience, work and sometimes a stroke of good fortune.

Luckily for us Singaporeans, finding a queen ant is actually a lot easier than you might think and in today's post i'm going to share some of the ways which i have been catching mine. 

I usually wait for a heavy rainstorm before setting out to search for queen ants during the night. I seek out lighted areas under HDB blocks and the queen ants will usually be on the wall or on the floor.

Nylanderia Queen

Camponotus Queen

Pheidole queen

Its very important to know how to identify a queen from a male. The queen usually has a large head with a bulky thorax whilst the male has a smaller head and longer antennae and looks like a mosquito/wasp . Another way to identify a queen ant is to check for her wing scars. 

This is a male ant

After finding a queen ant, place the container over the queen and wait for her to climb up and then cover it. In some rare cases where the queen refuses to climb up the container , just simply sweep the queen into the container and cover it . 

After catching the queen, place her in a test tube setup. 

You'll need test tube and cotton

Fill the test tube with 50% water and insert the cotton in . make sure the cotton has a damp tip.

Camponotus Auriventris queen in test tube setup 

Don't be disappointed if can't find any queen ants on your first few tries, sometimes its all about luck. I hope that by sharing my experience with you, it will make your search for queens easier.

Happy hunting 

Cheers!

Introduction

Given this is my first ingress on the blog, it’s felicitous for me to set the scene. I started ants-keeping back in June 2016 and during that time there's only a few people who actually kept ants as pets in Singapore. What actually sparked my interest towards this hobby was after watching Ants Canada's video on YouTube, the one which he featured his fire ant colony. After lots of deliberation, and some research, I thought ant-keeping might be an intriguing hobby/interest to take up. Why ant-keeping? I suppose I have always had a certain fascination for ants albeit my knowledge of them is remotely limited. They seem well organized in their miniature societies and I know I’ll learn a lot more about them as my hobby progresses. 

 

I remember a few years ago getting one of those formicarium when i was a child. It was one of those plastic gel filled ones where you're supposed to catch a few worker ants and put them inside to see how they dig their tunnels. It was fun for a while but as I recall the ants didn’t lived very long and i lost interest and so it was discarded . 

 

Hopefully i will fare a whole lot better this time round , so why not follow me on this journey. You never know you may be tempted to take up this hobby yourself. Or if you already keep ants any help you can give me will be very much appreciated. 

  

  

Thanks for reading my first blog entry!