Apparently, this makes for a good home for a variety of ants.  So far I have spied 5 different species all within the same area.  They are tightly packed together as well in a radius of about 25 yards or so. 

Although I have not officially identified them yet, the genus present appear to include Pogonomyrmex, Dorymymex, Formica and possibly Tapinoma and the fifth I have no clue about yet.

A recent visit resulted in some fun photo taking.  Here a harvester works vigorously to get a popcorn seed up the large curb abutting the habitat.  These type of harvester are not strong climbers in my experience, so I must applaud the effort here.

I also witnessed another harvester working to bring a complete bee carcass back the nest by herself.  Along the way, she encountered some Dorymyrmex and had to continuously fight them off.  In the end she came too close to one of the Dorymyrmex’s nest entrances and was overcome.  They stole her prize after all her work. 

I intend to visit these colonies throughout the summer.  Hopefully, I can identify them all down to species and if lucky, capture a queen to raise into a captive colony. 

This project is a bit different.  I want to give the schools the ability to observe the animal lifecycle in action.  Therefore, I need queen ants.  And I need your help to collect them. 

How You Can Help Me

Queens make mating flights in the Spring, you will notice this by seeing a huge swarm of ants in an area.  This might be near a nest, it might not.  You might see numerous ants spread out over your backyard, balcony, window sill or in the parking lot at work.

When you do, please drop me a note or a call with the area.  If it is close and I am free, I will try to come by and make a collection.  If you are inspired you could collect some for me. 

What To Look For

Queens look different from worker ants.  First of all they are much larger and their bodies are shaped very differently.  An ant has three parts to its body; head, thorax, abdomen.  The thorax is in the middle and on a queen, it is very large.  Here is a a perfect example:

Notice the queen has a larger middle section than her workers AND she is larger AND she has wings.

Wings are the other telltale sign of a mating flight because they do after all fly! 

Shortly after the flight, however, a mated queen will rub off her wings so keep an eye out for her, she is the ultimate prize for my project.

Color, Size, Species

I am not interested in the small argentine ant that is all to common in Los Angeles. 

Though interesting to study, these successful buggers are everywhere and are in fact wiping out other species in the area.  Plus, they don’t fly.  They are small and brownish, so if you see that, you can pretty much ignore.  And by small I mean?  Ants are all small relatively, but Argentines are about a 2-3mm in size and Queens bigger.

Anything that is multicolor or bicolor (red and black) is AWESOME!  Call me, ASAP. 

Anything large (10mm+) is AWESOME, Call me, ASAP. 

Anything red and large is AWESOME!  Call me, ASAP.

Time of Day

It could be anytime really, but midday through evening is a good time.  Warmth and moisture are important.  It just rained yesterday so this week is a good time given that flights usually follow rain.  Be on the lookout!  In the early mornings, you might notice a solitary queen out foraging for food.  DON’T STEP ON HER!!! 

Regions

Unfortunately, we have to stick the local Socal region.  So, my friends out of the area can’t help me.  It is completely ILLEGAL to transport live queens across state borders in the United States.  This is largely due to an overly aggressive law created in reaction to the invasive fire ant species but that is another story.

Collecting

If you are inspired to help or want to do something like this for your kids or hobby, it’s not hard.  Bring along individual containers of some sort to collect the queens.

Something small is preferred like a small box or Petri dish with a top; a test tube is perfect.  You can use a Q-tip or soft paint brush to brush the queen into the container.  I am nearly positive that a queen would not sting you, but this is actually a gap in my learning and with some species, it would so not be fun to be bitten or stung so don’t just pick them up. 

After you have collected her, you’ll want to keep her in the container in a dark, quiet place where she will be undisturbed until I stop by or you decide to keep her.  The container should have a bit of moist cotton, not wet, but she will dry out and die without some moisture.  A test tube stoppered like this is perfect:

Wrap-up

So, really, that is a long-winded way of saying “please call me if you see a mating flight or ant swarm.”  I appreciate your help and so will the children.

Here is the latest incarnation of the acrylic/plaster combination design.  This model is much more slim the previous boxes and a bit taller.  In effect, it is a more economical use of space and more appropriate for smaller species and colonies.  The chambers and tunnels are smaller, though could be smaller still for the species I currently have in there.

This shot shows you the tower itself and the flexible tubing I used to connect a foraging area.  Out the right side you see the water tube.

In this shot you can see the nature of the lid.  I had to make sure there was a way for the moisture rising from the water basin below to escape efficiently.  Therefore I used the same mesh mesh covering sealed with crazy glue and lined with tape.  All in the design is much the same as my prior post just smaller. 

Below you can see a shot of the inhabitants.  If anyone has any ideas on the species, please chime in.  I haven’t had a chance to get a good shot of them yet.

 
Sony A-100, Sigma 50mm 1:2.8 Macro Lens, cropped & resized in PSP8

Sony A-100, Sigma 50mm 1:2.8 Macro Lens, cropped in PSP8

Well that misfortune has been interrupted for the time being.  My oldest son stumbled across such a queen a few weeks ago in where else but my mom’s drive way.  Low and behold, there she was one hot day, just excavating a newly found nest in a crack in the drive.

We quickly, though patiently scooped her up and brought her home.  I’ve always felt odd about gathering ants from their natural habitats and bringing them into captivity, though I am fairly certain, a colony in that location had a very minimal chance of survival.

However, her chances may not be much improved as captive ants require a lot of patience, attention and luck just the same.  So, without further ado, here is the lovely lady we brought home.  I’ll detail her setup another time.

The design is basically a three dimensional plaster nest encased in an acrylic box.  Pretty simple.  However, I wanted to make the creation of the plaster piece easy and repeatable.  That meant creating a mold.  I found some helpful instructions here.  The hard part was tracking down the silicone rubber that was available nearby and in quantities I could afford.  None of the local art supply stores had this.  I didn’t want to purchase it online because it’s hard to ask questions and get advice, etc.  

I finally located a place about 30 miles from my house and made the drive down one day and picked it up.  Silicone Rubber is MESSY!  Wow.  I was kinda surprised how difficult it is to work with without making a huge mess.  It comes in two parts that you mix together; the rubber and a catalyst.  The catalyst is just liquid consistency and easy to manage.  I, of course, spilled it on my driveway and now have to figure out how to get rid of it.     The rubber is like warmed up taffy or that marshmallow whip stuff you buy at the grocery store.  Actually, that’s exactly what it’s like.  It’s almost impossible to measure, which you have to do and TOTALLY impossible to clean up afterwards.  My measuring cup is wasted.

ANYWAY, I struggled through and completed my first mold.   It is based on an original model that I created by pouring plaster into a plastic/acrylic box that had clay tunnels laid out in it.  The product I used is RTV 500 and it works exactly as described.  It does an incredible job of completely seeping into every nook and cranny and making an exact replica of your original.

Here is the finished product:

I actually poured Hydrostone into the mould instead of plaster.  I’ve read on the Antfarm message board that it is more mould resistant than plaster.  It certainly sets up much harder and is less porous.  The design is slightly modified from the first one I posted here.  You notice there is a small Fluon-lined chamber for foraging, feeding, etc.  Also, the original had trouble with moisture build-up so on top there is a large hole that I have covered with a fine mesh to allow evaporation.

Also, the design is now multisided.  So as you see in this shot, it’s got chambers for all four sides of the box.  Also, you’ll note there is a  funnel-topped tube for adding water once evaporation happens.

Underneath we retain the saturation plate separating the Hydrostone block from the water and gravel below.

So, does it work?  I know one thing, right off the bat.  The chambers and tunnels I’ve created are way too large for smaller species.  Also, I’ve heard that in some cases, ants think when they have a large number of chambers available that some chambers are outside the nest and so they deposit waste there.  I don’t know what the long term impact of this might be. 

Consequently, I’ve decided to go smaller.  The Container Store has a smaller sized box that is a bit taller but much slimmer.  The problem is, it’s impossible to get your fingers in there to place clay tunnels and chambers on the walls and then pour plaster/Hydrostone into it.  So, I am gambling a bit by creating a model from clay to start and will use it to create another mold. The gamble is with spacing.  There’s no easy way to make sure the model is the exact size of the internal dimensions of the box.  So I am getting as close as possible.  It will fit, but won’t be as snug.  That could lead to too much moisture exposure or even smaller species drowning.  Drowned queens are something I experienced early on it’s a major drag.  You always feel responsible. 

So, here’s shot of the progress I’ve made.  This only has 3 sides of chambers, the 4th side is just one long entrance tunnel.  Hopefully this design works and because they are small, they can be easily and quickly expanded by adding another one. 

My problem with plaster nests is that it always seems like you have to manually water them using a spray bottle or drip, whatever.  Coinciding with the recent acrylic/plaster combinations I came across an article on the naturalistic display of the M. Mendax colony at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden insectarium (http://www.sasionline.org/antsfiles/pages/mendax/mendax.html).  It is an incredible display and very ambitious.  The director informed me that it took over 100 hours to build.  Anyway, within the article it mentions the idea of moisture being at the bottom of the case and being allowed to flow up naturally during evaporation.  This is much like the real conditions in the earth’s soil where so many ant species thrive.

So I put all this together and came up with this design.  As you can see it has a plaster interior with chambers molded from clay during the casting process and resides in a plastic/acrylic box.  No innovation there really.  However, what I have added is the gravel/moisture basin and externally controlled water supply.

The plaster block actually sits on top of a cut piece of acrylic about 1mm thick with multiple holes drilled into it to allow moisture to pass directly into the plaster.  I call this the saturation plate because its there to prevent the plaster from becoming over saturated with water if it were to sit directly on the gravel below.  Beneath the plate is a gravel layer which is used to prevent drowning but allow the ants access to the water for drinking, etc.  The jar to the left has a 1/4″ outside diameter tube running from it to the case into the gravel layer and below the saturation plate.  When I need to add water, I just pop the top and pour.  My hope is that I will not have to do this regularly, perhaps a few times per month.

The top of the case is removable which allows easy feeding and cleaning.  Ideally there would be more space between the top of the plaster block and the lid, but hey this is the first one I’ve done. 

I hope to have a small colony in there shortly.  I plan to test with the overabundant and invasive argentine ant by transplanting a queen, her brood and several workers in here within the next week.

Close up of tubing, gravel and saturation plate: