30 replies to this topic

[Ricardo]

Tell us how you got into ants. I will chose the 5 best. Entry stops at 10:00 am, 1/17/17, pacific time.

International shipping is okay. Goodluck.

Edited by Ricardo, January 16 2017 - 10:18 AM.

[Kevin]

Well, I can make the best out of it, even if this never happens.

 

*ehhem, let the story begin.*

 

Once upon a time, I was on YouTube, and Mikey Bustos was in my recommended feed. I saw a cockroach being eaten alive ad giving birth at the same time. I was hooked. 

 

I kept watching some AntsCanada, it was like my crack. I came upon Formiculture.com, and here I am today.

[Loops117]

Oh man, I'm gonna join.

[Kevin]

Oh man, I'm gonna join.

It's not that easy, fam. You gotta read the post, fam.

[Reevak]

I got into ant keeping because Mikey Bustos uploaded a video about his fire ants planning to escape. It went viral and I found it. I was surprised that people kept ants as pets and I began watching his videos. When I was done with most of them (I skipped a few that were just about his old colonies), I looked for more YouTubers that made ant videos. When I couldn't find anymore of those, I did more research on my own and I have quite a few websites saved on my computer to make sure I don't forget anything. Eventually, I found out about this forum and here I am. I still don't have any ants because I learned about it so late in the year and ants were beginning to hibernate. I only managed to find one queen. She had three or four broken legs and couldn't walk, only crawl. She would constantly fall over in the test tube I put her in and because she still had wings, she would get stuck on her back. Because of what I know now, I believe she was a parasitic ant queen of some sort anyways because her head was quite large. I decided to let her go because I thought that maybe she could manage to survive somehow out in the wild rather than starving to death on her back in my test tube. Now I just sit and wait until nuptial flights start again. And that's how I got into ants.

[AntsBrazil]

As most of the people I got into ant keeping by watching the AntsCanada channel on youtube, but since I saw the first video I loved the ants and told to myself that I needed to get into this hobby. I saw almost all his tutorial videos and since in the time was summer here in Brazil I tried to find some queens, and I found 2 Acromyrmex, but I released them because I had no experience at that time and this is a difficult type of ant to keep.

That year I couldn't find other queens, then I had to wait until next year(2016), while I was waiting I tried to learn as much as I could to be able to raise successful colonies. When the spring arrived I captured a lot of queens, including Acromyrmex and Atta that now I could keep, because I knew what to do.

This has been the main reason of my happiness in the last months, college is hard and stressful, but the ants help me get into their world and forget about problems for some time. 

I hope I can donate some of my colonies to some schools here in my city to hopefully help the professors teach the kids about the insects, and maybe get teachers and kids into the hobby.

This is such a great hobby but also almost unknown in my country, I want to make the kids see this world and maybe help them choose their future career(I wish someone had shown this hobby to me before I got into college, so I could be doing what I love.) 

[Kevin]

I just noticed the specified time doesn't say AM or PM haha.

[Ricardo]

So far, so good.

[Loops117]

 

Oh man, I'm gonna join.

It's not that easy, fam. You gotta read the post, fam.

 

I know buddy. I'm about to jump into that [censored].

[Air]

A story on how I found ants is a long, what I find an interesting story. It started when I was about 7, I would love to go into my backyard and step on those really big fire ant mounds, watching them move their  brood into the depths of the underground. I started to like ants more and more, and would start throwing any insects I found into the nest and watch them carry it back to their nest and bring it into the depths. I started researching more and more about these wonderful insects, and decided I should get a queen. I got a queen from Ebay, a lasius niger queen. Now knowing it was illegal, I regretted it, but it was such a cool ant. Sadly I put her in a huge formicarium and she died, but it was extra sad because I was attached to her. Her name was Elizabeth haha. After she died I tried to go out and find some queens. I found tons of Camponotus majors running down a tree and thought they were queens, so I caught them. They all died.After that I went to a tennis court and found a Camponotus queen, but she got attacked and died. After that I took a long break, feeling like I could never get back into anting again. So, I started watching a 2k subscriber mikey bustos, and got so hooked on ants again, so now I am back into it with many colonies. I have so many colonies, but not many formicariums, so getting one would be great!

[antgenius123]

Well, I already had a fascination in ants. I would always remember the fire ants flying every summer and I called them flying ants. I didn't really understand at the time that they were males and females   One day,  I saw AntsCanada's channel on my recommended tab. I watched his video in 2014 (can't remember which one) . But the moment I saw the ants and the formicarium I was immediately hooked. I remember getting so excited when I saw ant species on the internet in my local neighbourhood. I started profusely reading about ants and watching more of his video's and after about a year I caught my first queen, which I now suspect was Formica sp. At the time I had a gel farm and I had read the warnings about putting queens in them. After a few days I decicded to let the queen go. Even though it was the first queen I caught, I knew it wouldn't be right. From there on I continued studying ants in my area, at school and pretty much everywhere I would look for all the different species of ants. I even advised friends on ant keeping ant catching queens. One day I plan to make my own website with multiple tutorials and advice on how to care for ants.The fact that other people also kept ants felt cool, it was like I had my own anting family. I also plan to catch some queens this year and house them in setups for future reference. Well, this was more of a story lol. Anyway there's a bunch of ants here but getting formicariums out here isn't the easiest since most websites don't ship here. So getting a formicarium would be really cool.

Edited by antgenius123, January 16 2017 - 10:00 AM.

[SamKeepsAnts]

For my whole life I have been interested in ants (not in keeping a colony just a mild interest) And then one day around a year and a half ago my friend who knew how much I liked ants gave me two books on ants Journey to the Ants and The Leafcutter Ants by Bert Holldobler and E. O. Wilson. Those books where very confusing for me because I knew only basics about ants (That they have a queen and workers of different castes and a colony is started by a queen mating with males. I know this seems like a lot but these books where meant for people who already new a lot more about ants) but where very entertaining and once I finished them I went on youtube and tried to find out how to get and ant colony and found Ants Canada.My first attempt at ant keeping was very rushed and I got a colony with the gan project that I had for 6 months that never grew that much and eventually died now that I think Back it might be because I didn't feed them enough variety but I still don't know why they died.Once they died I was sad and stopped keeping ants until a few months ago when I stumbled across ants Canada again on youtube (And with several times the subs and millions of views)And decided to start ant keeping again.

 

I know this might have some spelling errors or bad grammar because I did this in a rush.

 

(also somewhere in here I found an infertile solenopsis queen but I can't remember when )

Edited by SamKeepsAnts, January 16 2017 - 10:28 AM.

[Alabama Anter]

I got into ant keeping when I got an assignment from BoyScouts to do a the Insect Study merit badge. They said I had to either get a beehive or an ant farm. I was going to do the easy gel ant farm but searched around on the Internet. I found AC and was like holy cow! So I got into ant keeping like that.

[Natev0722]

Like a lot of people I watched antscanda I started watching his videos for about 2 years when I finally decided to get a queen ant my first ant was a polymorphic queen which where extremely abundant in my area after a while I noticed mites she and her workers sadly died then I got a myrmecocystus mexicanus and an Acromyrmex Versicolor which are thriving hope you enjoyed my story and I hope I win good luck everyone😊

[Solenoqueen]

Welcome to the forum, Natev0722, and goodbye to your chances to win the giveaway XD

 

I always thought ants were very fascinating creatures, and they astounded me indeed. How they all worked together in liason, and how they didn't cannibalize like other insects. For 8 years, I thought the only type of ant was the useless Argentine ant. Until that day when I came across 3 fighting colonies of Pogonomyrex californicus bicolor, Solenopsis xyloni, and Myrmecocystus mexicana. If I would have known now, they would have been dug up and mine. But, this allowed my mind to realize that there were more ants in the world than just the plain old brown Argentine ant. Since that day, I kept researching about them, until 2 years later, the thought that told me that I should get into antkeeping crossed my mind. Then, I found very good companies and videos made by TarHeelAnts and Mikey Bustos, and I was amazed. Then, as I was looking for ant adoption websites, I found a guy near me, and realized the website was expired. The website was dead 2 years previously, and I found this website that was still functioning, that it led me to. Man, am I happy now! And that is how I got into antkeeping!

[Vendayn]

I'm not entirely sure why I got into ants. I've been into ants since I can ever remember.

 

Instead, I think I'll go by my first "memory" that I can go back to, which was really fascinating. I was 9, maybe 10 years old at the time. Somewhere during that age range (I'm 27 now).

 

I lived in a place with Argentine ants all over, but there were still Pogonomyrmex around in the non-urban areas. The apartments were near a low lying mountain without any urban areas built on it (that changed later though). So, one year (exactly a year before we moved) a colony of Pogonomyrmex popped up inside the apartment complex. They had made a nest in a little plant area along a wall, with a road and parking space around them. I watched Argentine ants attack them every day (they had to cross the road) for that entire year. I would cover the Pogonomyrmex nest up (which they never did before) and then eventually they started covering their hole on their own. Maybe its a coincidence, since I often see ants cover up their nest during attacks since. But, they never did cover up their nest until I started doing it for them. However, what was different is, even in an urban area, the Pogonomyrmex survived for that whole year of constant Argentine ant battles. The Argentine ants couldn't actually do much, except kill some of the workers on the surface, since they blocked off their nest.

 

However, a week before we moved. The Pogonomyrmex colony had dug across the road, and two huge apartment buildings down from their colony. The colony had gotten huge! The Argentine ants were attacking them all over wherever their nest entrances opened up, but there were thousands of Pogonomyrmex all over the sidewalks in the apartment complex. The amount of space they had underground must have been vast, as it was a pretty long distance from the wall (which they probably also had dug on the other side of the wall too at that point, which was just a dry dirt field with some plants), through the road and all the way down two buildings away. I kind of wish I got more time to see what happened to them, but I doubt they are still there. They'd probably have gotten sprayed sadly, as I doubt the Argentine ants could have killed them that easily. Plus it was a long time ago. It was the first and only time though, where I got to see Pogonomyrmex in an urban area do really well, despite being surrounded by tons of Argentine ants.

 

I have always loved watching ants though, even before that. Though my memory is a bit hazy before my observations of the Pogonomyrmex that year. 

 

They've just always been fascinating for me, always really interesting and fun to watch. It took a long time for my first actual successful colony (which happened to be Solenopsis invicta), which I was around 15 years old at the time. Though, since watching those Pogonomyrmex, and seeing its my first "big" memory of ants, my interest in ants probably escalated at that point in time.

Edited by Vendayn, January 16 2017 - 4:37 PM.

[Reacker]

I didn't choose the ant life, the ant life chose me. 

[CallMeCraven]

Like a bunch of people have said, I got hooked on AntsCanada's videos, and then I found my first queen outside my work. From there on I have been researching and looking for more ants.

[Canadian anter]

LOL. I always had an interest for (some) ants. I remember hating Formica for some reason though and really liking Tetramorium. I never had got into keeping because i didn't know it was possible based on at last 10 attempts of just keeping a myrmica queen in a jar and tossing it in some random dark place.. However, I knew basic biology about ants. One day, Nov 16 2015, I saw hundreds of Lasius claviger queens walking around and the citronella smell made me think "damn I have to see if I can breed these in captivity" I never even picked one up before so I was such a surprise. Then I saw the yellow workers. I never saw a yellow ant before that so that made me want to try even more. So I did some research on how to keep them and because I didn't have enough workers, I just gave 5 of the ten I had to one queen and 5 to the other. So I started doing research (and missed the prenolepis flights) and in may 2016, I started my antkeeping journey

[Miles]

I have always loved nature and wildlife, especially after I became enthralled with the late Steve Irwin (The Crocodile Hunter) as a young child.

 

However, ants were actually an exception for quite some time. I was unfortunate enough to sit on a Tetramorium nest in second grade. I was stung all over my body and stripped in front of my peers by playground supervisors trying to get the ants off. It was humiliating! I didn't appreciate ants for many years, and in sixth grade we were assigned a project to learn more about something that we really didn't like. I got an ant farm with the very same species - Tetramorium cf. caespitum. I became enthralled, and I have been keeping and researching ants ever since. My first queen was a carpenter ant (Camponotus modoc) named Kate, and although short-lived in my boyhood care, she was a catalyst for my passion.

 

I'm happy to say that ants have propelled me into an exciting conservation and science-based career track, and I'm currently studying Environmental Science and Entomology at Montana State University. If you'd like to learn more about what I'm working on, check out this video.

Edited by Miles, January 16 2017 - 7:31 PM.