ANTSTORE World of Ants

[rupertv]

My new (and first ever) colony of Lasius niger seem to like crickets quite a bit and they're quite plentiful at the moment so I was wondering if it would be a good idea to go on a collecting mission to get a load of them to store them in the freezer so I can feed them to my ants when there are less around.

So the question is do crickets freeze well or do ants turn up their noses at frozen/defrosted food? ...we only like fresh organic stuff don't you know...

Thanks in advance

Rupert

[miszt]

Yep freezing them is fine, allot of us do it just drop them in frozen, they will defrost within a few minutes

[JimmyVe]

Hello rupertv and welcome to the forum.

Yes it is good to do so, i do it all the time.
In my experience ants love it more when it is fresh killed, but they also like it when it is defrosted.

[rupertv]

Thanks guys - I guess I'll be out hunting tomorrow - just got to work out how best to catch them and contain them when I'm trying to get more than one

Cheers - looking forward to chatting more!

Rupert
p.s. got an antcam set up on my ant blog page if anyone's interested. Not a huge amount of action as there's not many ants - it's zoomed in on theri honey and water bowl at the moment so you'll only see any if they pop over for a drink

[JimmyVe]

Very nice antcam, but like you said, there is not much of activity.

I buy my crickets in the local pet shop.

[rupertv]

what a great idea - never thought of that ....although for now I can find them pretty easily out in the wild so I'll still be hunting ...but popping down the pet shop too to check em out

[miszt]

Insects are suprisingly easy to catch, u can make a trap, by digging a hole, put a jam jar in it, then put a funnel in thetop so that the top of the funnel is level with the ground, dont leave any gaps around the edge, leave it for 24 hours, and you'll have a few weeks food for your ants

Also Moth's go down well with allot of ants, as they are very soft bodied, look up 'moth trap' in google, they are also very easy to make

[JimmyVe]

Hey John that is a great idea ! Easy and successful.

[rupertv]

I've now got a semi decent stock of crickets in the freezer - I'm going to have to design a better way to catch and keep hold of multiple crickets though as it was a major pain stopping the ones I'd already got from escaping when I added more.

Insect trap to be built soon

[JimmyVe]

Hehe, yes i bet it was difficult. Good luck with your insect trap.

[miszt]

I've now got a semi decent stock of crickets in the freezer - I'm going to have to design a better way to catch and keep hold of multiple crickets though as it was a major pain stopping the ones I'd already got from escaping when I added more.

Insect trap to be built soon

I've posted up a few designs Hyperlinks sind nur für registrierte Nutzer sichtbar