ANTSTORE World of Ants

[Skippy]

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Be ware these species are protected in Belgium and Germany (and probably some more countries) It is illegal to catch ore keep them !
In Slovakia they are not protected so Skippy can keep them but please don't sell them to users where they are protected.
Thanks

Hello...

here is story about very nice ant and formicarium.
I made this formicarium one all weekend. It was constructed for some Messor or Cataglyphis, but one day I get in nature one colony with some queens of Formica polyctena , because I wont study this interesting ant specie in formicarium. If you know , in one colony is about 50+ queens , and I got only some , so I think it is not so much bad for nature. Of course , there is about 50 big colonies on one hill, very nice locality and I´ve come there every year to look on.

I havn´t had a formicarium where I could get this cought colony , so I got them into that terarium for messor.

It is VERY agressive ant I researched , and after 15 minutes after get boil with ants into terarium , it started build some small hole to hide queens.

After 2 hours I known , I lost my nice formicarium
It started building some ant Babylon from small stones. I´ve got there some wooden picks to make it easy for them , because one small stone is maybe 20x more weight like one worker.

First photos are of terarium before... it was very nice
Photos after are photos during making some HUGE nest there ... I called it Babylon.
This they were made during night ... I´ll getting here actually photos of building theirs stone-soil nest.

ENJOY

[SteveUK28]

ohh very very nice Skippy.. Do u have any more details of these ants.. they look very nice

[Skippy]

Yes these ants looks nice , but they making a lot of formic acid ... you can only get hand into terarium and get it out , and all hand is wet by formic acid ...

Hyperlinks sind nur für registrierte Nutzer sichtbar - queen
Hyperlinks sind nur für registrierte Nutzer sichtbar - worker of Formica rufa , very similar to Formica polyctena

[mzfckr]

its ytong in the basin? and you could get picture of nest with ants?

[Skippy]

Yes , here is it --- I´ve taken on camera only some chambers because they dont like light and run very quickly ...

[JimmyVe]

Very nice Skippy. The pictures and the farm, i love it.

These species are protected here in Belgium, you may not catch them. Don't they build high ground nest in the wild ?

[Skippy]

Yes they build , but this specie starting build only at this time , now are there only holes in ground (nature) , and full of ants everywhere

in Slovak are not protected this specie ... only rufa and others , because here we have a lot of them somewhere

[Kale^^]

Nice pics. Queen looks cool.

Who would like to raise rufa? Yuck, they smell very bad & hard to keep.
In finland F.Rufa is very common species.

[Skippy]

I think formica rufa and polyctena looks a bit like that same , and smell too (formic acid) aaand also hard to keep (need a lot of insects)

[JimmyVe]

How are you going to keep them when the colony gets bigger ? Can they still live in a ytong ?

[Skippy]

They getting queens there only for some time (1/4 of day are queens there) , but I think , there is so dry (in ytong). I think they will getting there cocoons , and in soil they´ll have larvae. Colony is smaller now , I get off some. They building now nest in soil , it is very nice to see