ANTSTORE World of Ants

[DwayneD]

Hi and apologies up front for a very newbie question - I'm very new to all this.

For my daughters recent birthday I bought her a basic ant farm from Amazon - not one of the gel ones, which everybody hates, but a small basic one with sand. This was purchased via interplayuk.com. I also purchased, from them, some Lasius niger ants (about 40) - Interplay don't supply queens so these are workers only.

Whilst we have both found the whole thing festinating - kids learning about nature, me re-igniting my love of ants and their endeavours/work ethic etc we both thought the whole thing a bit incomplete without a queen.

So I purchased a Queen (+ 15 workers) from Antstore which arrived this morning. As an aside I also bought a starter set from Antstore but that hasn't arrived yet (and anyhow may be a while before I can persuade my wife to let me set it up).

I understand that the queen can survive in the test tube for about a year but obviously we'd like to get it into my daughter's ant farm. So can I just transfer the Queen and ants into the dish that came with the ant farm and connect to the farm? I appreciate that I will need to provide honey, water and dead insects now and again. Or will this start a war? The ants with the Queen are much smaller than those in the ant farm (do lasius niger vary in size or are these just very young?). What is your recommendation on how I should proceed?

I also have a question re hibernation. It looks like these ants would normally hibernate October - February? Clearly this won't happen in my daughters bedroom (nice and hot) - what happens if they don't hibernate? What happens if we skip hibernation this year but then hibernate next year? And how do people trigger the hibernation - I have a nice dark container in the garage - never freezes but gets down as low as 3% C in mid winter.

Thanks for everybody's help in advance.

[SteveUK28]

Hello there DwayneD and to the forum.

Firstly, adding the queen to the farm with the workers in it will more than likely result in the queen being attacked and killed, so not such a good idea. Really you want to be getting rid of the old workers and then letting the new queen and workers into the farm.

The workers with your queen are most probabily first gen workers so yes they would be small.

Hibernation is very important for ants, it lets the queen take a break between laying eggs and boosts up there energy, idealy this should be done every year. However missing it one year wouldnt harm the ants greatly. But saying that, they may also try and go into hibernation themselves anyways. I would advise you do let hem hibernate. Sticking them in the garage, perhaps wrapped in bubble wrap would be more than suttible, perhaps placing the setup in a box if you manage to get them in there in time.. and then just placing a bit of bubble over the top.. During winter/hibernation all they really need is sugarwater/honey and some fresh water.. and maybe try them with a dead insect every week.

Apart from that.. Best of luck and i hope they do really well for you