I appreciate the feedback.
A month or longer ago I added prominent verbiage to the product detail page to specify that the GroTube was recommended for small colonies that have reared their first workers.
My guess is that the cavity is too large and plain for lone queens to feel secure in laying eggs. As soon as they get their first workers, they appear to behave normally inside it.
It has been difficult to get people to understand what the point of the product is—why I developed it. The GroTube is meant to allow the antkeeper the ability to view their small colony better than any other product.
The horizontal acrylic fastened to a high-contrast background offers superior visibility compared to every other formicary designed for small colonies. Where one would otherwise need a flashlight to shine in a cave, or a white piece of paper placed under a test tube to be able to see the ants clearly, the GroTube allows one to observe the ants and their most intimate activities, right out of the box, in the most unobfuscated level of detail. The durability, reusability, and ability to disassemble the thing completely to perform maintenance are just icing on the cake.
There is generally a spectrum, wherein a product that is designed for maximum comfort of the ants, is designed for minimal visibility inside the nest (one that most closely emulates an underground chamber). The GroTube is a unique hybrid—an attempt to allow for maximum visibility, with a respectable level of comfort for ants. The tradeoff, of course, is that it works best for ants that will customize and tailor the nest space to their liking, in order to achieve the maximum level of comfort, which is most easily achieved with a small colony, than with a lone queen.
Edited by drtrmiller, December 27 2014 - 1:23 PM.
