18 replies to this topic

[AntPhycho]

Today was the day I decided to move my ants from their old moldy drying out test tube into a new one, and for some reason they are not moving. It has been 45 minutes now and nothing, I even have a flashlight shining on them. See them here https://imgur.com/a/PkOK, EDIT imgur isn't working here is the other link https://ibb.co/nbfK65

Edited by AntPhycho, September 16 2017 - 1:22 PM.

[AntPhycho]

Been around an hour now, still nothing, is this normal?????

[Pleming]

Yep, sometimes it takes days. Use a heating cable and heat up the new test-tube. They will begin moving the brood to the heated test-tube in minutes. This works for me. 

[AntPhycho]

Yep, sometimes it takes days. Use a heating cable and heat up the new test-tube. They will begin moving the brood to the heated test-tube in minutes. This works for me.

I do not have a heating cable, but I am glad that they will eventually move, even if I had a heating cable lol I would be a little afraid to accidentally cook my ants.

[AntPhycho]

Would it be safe to pour the ants into the new tube?

[Ants_Texas]

If the species doesn't like moisture, you can put a heat source such as a cable or pad under their moly side's water. It will evaporate and make their brood pile wet, and they'll eventually move. Also, I've found that you need a pretty bright light or they aren't budging. I evaporated water and used a bright light to move my Myrmecocystus mimicus and they took about three hours.

[AntPhycho]

If the species doesn't like moisture, you can put a heat source such as a cable or pad under their moly side's water. It will evaporate and make their brood pile wet, and they'll eventually move. Also, I've found that you need a pretty bright light or they aren't budging. I evaporated water and used a bright light to move my Myrmecocystus mimicus and they took about three hours.

I am pretty sure Solenopsis Invicta is a water loving species because they pile their brood right against the wet cotton, also my ants actually started starving because they were not budging so I aborted and returned them to their container. I put the new test tube next to there old one so if they want to move in they can, I also made sure to leave the old test tube light and keep the new one dark. Here they are https://ibb.co/c5pNuQ

[StopSpazzing]

Solenopsis invicta dgaf, tap them hard to get them out. However, with ant keeping, you need to have patience.

[dspdrew]

Having hundreds of colonies, I don't have time to wait for ants to move. I move all mine forcefully whenever possible. If you have the right tools, it's not hard. Get yourself a few plastic tubs of various sizes and coat them with Fluon. They are great for temporary staging and allow you to simply pour the ants where you want them. Fluon-coated funnels are a great tool too.

[AntPhycho]

Having hundreds of colonies, I don't have time to wait for ants to move. I move all mine forcefully whenever possible. If you have the right tools, it's not hard. Get yourself a few plastic tubs of various sizes and coat them with Fluon. They are great for temporary staging and allow you to simply pour the ants where you want them. Fluon-coated funnels are a great tool too.

So you just dump the workers, brood, and queen into a new tube? Won't this stress the queen?

[dspdrew]

 

Having hundreds of colonies, I don't have time to wait for ants to move. I move all mine forcefully whenever possible. If you have the right tools, it's not hard. Get yourself a few plastic tubs of various sizes and coat them with Fluon. They are great for temporary staging and allow you to simply pour the ants where you want them. Fluon-coated funnels are a great tool too.

So you just dump the workers, brood, and queen into a new tube? Won't this stress the queen?

 

 

Ultimately, yes, that's what I do. I'm sure it's stressful for any living creature to be dumped into a container, but probably not anymore stressing than something disturbing the colony's nest in the wild. If there isn't something stressing them out constantly, I don't think it's a big deal. I haven't seen any evidence of negative affects from doing this.

[VoidElecent]

Having hundreds of colonies, I don't have time to wait for ants to move. I move all mine forcefully whenever possible. If you have the right tools, it's not hard. Get yourself a few plastic tubs of various sizes and coat them with Fluon. They are great for temporary staging and allow you to simply pour the ants where you want them. Fluon-coated funnels are a great tool too.

 

How do you typically move brood from one tube to another? I especially had a hard time moving my Nylanderia terricola colony a few days ago; the eggs and larvae stuck to the walls of their test tubes and didn't poor out with the rest of the colony. I ended up using a combination of a cotton swab and a fine paintbrush, which was hard in itself.

 

Any ideas?

[T.C.]

Small colonies, like in founding stages I dump as well. I tried to dump a huge colony back a few years ago. Just don't do that.

[StopSpazzing]

 

Having hundreds of colonies, I don't have time to wait for ants to move. I move all mine forcefully whenever possible. If you have the right tools, it's not hard. Get yourself a few plastic tubs of various sizes and coat them with Fluon. They are great for temporary staging and allow you to simply pour the ants where you want them. Fluon-coated funnels are a great tool too.

 

How do you typically move brood from one tube to another? I especially had a hard time moving my Nylanderia terricola colony a few days ago; the eggs and larvae stuck to the walls of their test tubes and didn't poor out with the rest of the colony. I ended up using a combination of a cotton swab and a fine paintbrush, which was hard in itself.

 

Any ideas?

 

That's what I had to do, roll the eggs/larvae out. Thinking of using water and a filter, dumping water into test tube then pouring it into a suspended filter. Untested.

[hendicott]

I'm kind of embraced to say but I've move my first ever caught queen about 5 times since I collected her in my kitchen in May of this year. The times I've dump, tapped, used a moist q-tip to move brood, I was in a hurry but I was very careful too. I've also put the tubes (sometimes diff end sizes) end to end with a bit of tap leaving an air gap, lighting one and covering the other. They have moved on their own a couple times over night, leaving a lamp on and covering "the nest" side I wanted them to go to. It's always a surprise when "the move" happens.

As far as stress, I've noticed and agreed with drew some stress but that period of time seems to be very short and 3 days to a weeks later every thing seems normal. I define normal based on forging and what they accept to eat.

They will move, I'd be more afraid of them escaping then not moving.

Just my 2 cents.

[dspdrew]

 

Having hundreds of colonies, I don't have time to wait for ants to move. I move all mine forcefully whenever possible. If you have the right tools, it's not hard. Get yourself a few plastic tubs of various sizes and coat them with Fluon. They are great for temporary staging and allow you to simply pour the ants where you want them. Fluon-coated funnels are a great tool too.

 

How do you typically move brood from one tube to another? I especially had a hard time moving my Nylanderia terricola colony a few days ago; the eggs and larvae stuck to the walls of their test tubes and didn't poor out with the rest of the colony. I ended up using a combination of a cotton swab and a fine paintbrush, which was hard in itself.

 

Any ideas?

 

 

That's why I use a staging area. Once all the ants are out of the tube, I use a damp barbecue skewer to pickup each and every piece of brood, and transfer it to the new tube. Once all the brood is moved, I pour the ants and large brood in.

[nurbs]

I too have hundreds of colonies in test tubes. I also just dump them into the clean test tube. Any brood that stays in the old test tube is easily transferred with a moist qtip.

 

Also, do a search. This question literally gets asked at least once a month.

[AntPhycho]

I too have hundreds of colonies in test tubes. I also just dump them into the clean test tube. Any brood that stays in the old test tube is easily transferred with a moist qtip.
 
Also, do a search. This question literally gets asked at least once a month.

I think that is a bit exaggerated, but I bet this post being easily found without a search probably helped many others.

[HongKongAnter]

I too am having problems with moving my nylanderia colony into a new test tube. The old test tube is moldy to a point where the entire thing is BLACK. The ants don't seem to happy to be in the situation and don't tend to move around much. HOW are you supposed to dump all of it into a new test tube ? Wouldn't the risk be kinda high? Perhaps it would lead to stress or even death if the colony. Please help me:*(
I too am having problems with moving my nylanderia colony into a new test tube. The old test tube is moldy to a point where the entire thing is BLACK. The ants don't seem to happy to be in the situation and don't tend to move around much. HOW are you supposed to dump all of it into a new test tube ? Wouldn't the risk be kinda high? Perhaps it would lead to stress or even death if the colony. Please help me:*(
I too am having problems with moving my nylanderia colony into a new test tube. The old test tube is moldy to a point where the entire thing is BLACK. The ants don't seem to happy to be in the situation and don't tend to move around much. HOW are you supposed to dump all of it into a new test tube ? Wouldn't the risk be kinda high? Perhaps it would lead to stress or even death if the colony. Please help me:*(
I too am having problems with moving my nylanderia colony into a new test tube. The old test tube is moldy to a point where the entire thing is BLACK. The ants don't seem to happy to be in the situation and don't tend to move around much. HOW are you supposed to dump all of it into a new test tube ? Wouldn't the risk be kinda high? Perhaps it would lead to stress or even death if the colony. Please help me:*(
I too am having problems with moving my nylanderia colony into a new test tube. The old test tube is moldy to a point where the entire thing is BLACK. The ants don't seem to happy to be in the situation and don't tend to move around much. HOW are you supposed to dump all of it into a new test tube ? Wouldn't the risk be kinda high? Perhaps it would lead to stress or even death if the colony. Please help me:*(
I too am having problems with moving my nylanderia colony into a new test tube. The old test tube is moldy to a point where the entire thing is BLACK. The ants don't seem to happy to be in the situation and don't tend to move around much. HOW are you supposed to dump all of it into a new test tube ? Wouldn't the risk be kinda high? Perhaps it would lead to stress or even death if the colony. Please help me:*(
I too am having problems with moving my nylanderia colony into a new test tube. The old test tube is moldy to a point where the entire thing is BLACK. The ants don't seem to happy to be in the situation and don't tend to move around much. HOW are you supposed to dump all of it into a new test tube ? Wouldn't the risk be kinda high? Perhaps it would lead to stress or even death if the colony. Please help me:*(
I too am having problems with moving my nylanderia colony into a new test tube. The old test tube is moldy to a point where the entire thing is BLACK. The ants don't seem to happy to be in the situation and don't tend to move around much. HOW are you supposed to dump all of it into a new test tube ? Wouldn't the risk be kinda high? Perhaps it would lead to stress or even death if the colony. Please help me:*(
I too am having problems with moving my nylanderia colony into a new test tube. The old test tube is moldy to a point where the entire thing is BLACK. The ants don't seem to happy to be in the situation and don't tend to move around much. HOW are you supposed to dump all of it into a new test tube ? Wouldn't the risk be kinda high? Perhaps it would lead to stress or even death if the colony. Please help me:*(
I too am having problems with moving my nylanderia colony into a new test tube. The old test tube is moldy to a point where the entire thing is BLACK. The ants don't seem to happy to be in the situation and don't tend to move around much. HOW are you supposed to dump all of it into a new test tube ? Wouldn't the risk be kinda high? Perhaps it would lead to stress or even death if the colony. Please help me:*(
I too am having problems with moving my nylanderia colony into a new test tube. The old test tube is moldy to a point where the entire thing is BLACK. The ants don't seem to happy to be in the situation and don't tend to move around much. HOW are you supposed to dump all of it into a new test tube ? Wouldn't the risk be kinda high? Perhaps it would lead to stress or even death if the colony. Please help me:*(
I too am having problems with moving my nylanderia colony into a new test tube. The old test tube is moldy to a point where the entire thing is BLACK. The ants don't seem to happy to be in the situation and don't tend to move around much. HOW are you supposed to dump all of it into a new test tube ? Wouldn't the risk be kinda high? Perhaps it would lead to stress or even death if the colony. Please help me:*(
I too am having problems with moving my nylanderia colony into a new test tube. The old test tube is moldy to a point where the entire thing is BLACK. The ants don't seem to happy to be in the situation and don't tend to move around much. HOW are you supposed to dump all of it into a new test tube ? Wouldn't the risk be kinda high? Perhaps it would lead to stress or even death if the colony. Please help me:*(
I too am having problems with moving my nylanderia colony into a new test tube. The old test tube is moldy to a point where the entire thing is BLACK. The ants don't seem to happy to be in the situation and don't tend to move around much. HOW are you supposed to dump all of it into a new test tube ? Wouldn't the risk be kinda high? Perhaps it would lead to stress or even death if the colony. Please help me:*(
I too am having problems with moving my nylanderia colony into a new test tube. The old test tube is moldy to a point where the entire thing is BLACK. The ants don't seem to happy to be in the situation and don't tend to move around much. HOW are you supposed to dump all of it into a new test tube ? Wouldn't the risk be kinda high? Perhaps it would lead to stress or even death if the colony. Please help me:*(
I too am having problems with moving my nylanderia colony into a new test tube. The old test tube is moldy to a point where the entire thing is BLACK. The ants don't seem to happy to be in the situation and don't tend to move around much. HOW are you supposed to dump all of it into a new test tube ? Wouldn't the risk be kinda high? Perhaps it would lead to stress or even death if the colony. Please help me:*(
I too am having problems with moving my nylanderia colony into a new test tube. The old test tube is moldy to a point where the entire thing is BLACK. The ants don't seem to happy to be in the situation and don't tend to move around much. HOW are you supposed to dump all of it into a new test tube ? Wouldn't the risk be kinda high? Perhaps it would lead to stress or even death if the colony. Please help me:*(
I too am having problems with moving my nylanderia colony into a new test tube. The old test tube is moldy to a point where the entire thing is BLACK. The ants don't seem to happy to be in the situation and don't tend to move around much. HOW are you supposed to dump all of it into a new test tube ? Wouldn't the risk be kinda high? Perhaps it would lead to stress or even death if the colony. Please help me:*(
I too am having problems with moving my nylanderia colony into a new test tube. The old test tube is moldy to a point where the entire thing is BLACK. The ants don't seem to happy to be in the situation and don't tend to move around much. HOW are you supposed to dump all of it into a new test tube ? Wouldn't the risk be kinda high? Perhaps it would lead to stress or even death if the colony. Please help me:*(
I too am having problems with moving my nylanderia colony into a new test tube. The old test tube is moldy to a point where the entire thing is BLACK. The ants don't seem to happy to be in the situation and don't tend to move around much. HOW are you supposed to dump all of it into a new test tube ? Wouldn't the risk be kinda high? Perhaps it would lead to stress or even death if the colony. Please help me:*(
I too am having problems with moving my nylanderia colony into a new test tube. The old test tube is moldy to a point where the entire thing is BLACK. The ants don't seem to happy to be in the situation and don't tend to move around much. HOW are you supposed to dump all of it into a new test tube ? Wouldn't the risk be kinda high? Perhaps it would lead to stress or even death if the colony. Please help me:*(
I too am having problems with moving my nylanderia colony into a new test tube. The old test tube is moldy to a point where the entire thing is BLACK. The ants don't seem to happy to be in the situation and don't tend to move around much. HOW are you supposed to dump all of it into a new test tube ? Wouldn't the risk be kinda high? Perhaps it would lead to stress or even death if the colony. Please help me:*(
I too am having problems with moving my nylanderia colony into a new test tube. The old test tube is moldy to a point where the entire thing is BLACK. The ants don't seem to happy to be in the situation and don't tend to move around much. HOW are you supposed to dump all of it into a new test tube ? Wouldn't the risk be kinda high? Perhaps it would lead to stress or even death if the colony. Please help me:*(
I too am having problems with moving my nylanderia colony into a new test tube. The old test tube is moldy to a point where the entire thing is BLACK. The ants don't seem to happy to be in the situation and don't tend to move around much. HOW are you supposed to dump all of it into a new test tube ? Wouldn't the risk be kinda high? Perhaps it would lead to stress or even death if the colony. Please help me:*(