80 replies to this topic

[Antapoloosa]

Just read through the entire thread. Looks like you've already made up your mind and answered your own question?

The type of care you need will depend on the species.

Tell the GAN farmer your schedule and how long you will be gone. If they are a knowledgeable and experienced ant keeper, they can sell you a species that will work with your schedule.

My local GAN farmer has actually been keeping and selling ants for years. And he actually told me that my ant colony would be fine if I keep them in my semi truck so long as the temperature and humidity is stable. He said that all the vibrations from the road would not bother them and they should adjust to it just fine. Assuming that an ant colony would survive the stress of daily travel, there is still the issue of crossing multiple state lines per week. The Gan farmer did not seem to care about that, his attitude was essentially "Who's going to know? Even if DOT Happens to search your truck and find an ant colony, odds are slim to none that it would be confiscated." Also he even invited me to a private black market ant group on Facebook. And that's about all that I am willing to share about his personal business on this forum. I am not pointing fingers or naming names.

[nurbs]

Just read through the entire thread. Looks like you've already made up your mind and answered your own question?
The type of care you need will depend on the species.
Tell the GAN farmer your schedule and how long you will be gone. If they are a knowledgeable and experienced ant keeper, they can sell you a species that will work with your schedule.

My local GAN farmer has actually been keeping and selling ants for years. And he actually told me that my ant colony would be fine if I keep them in my semi truck so long as the temperature and humidity is stable. He said that all the vibrations from the road would not bother them and they should adjust to it just fine. Assuming that an ant colony would survive the stress of daily travel, there is still the issue of crossing multiple state lines per week. The Gan farmer did not seem to care about that, his attitude was essentially "Who's going to know? Even if DOT Happens to search your truck and find an ant colony, odds are slim to none that it would be confiscated." Also he even invited me to a private black market ant group on Facebook. And that's about all that I am willing to share about his personal business on this forum. I am not pointing fingers or naming names.

So after four pages of everyone debating how you should care for your ants while you are away for 2-4 weeks, your real question was “Can I move colonies with a queen across State lines?”

Gosh. That topic has never been discussed on these forums.

The answer would be a big NO.

[Antapoloosa]

Just read through the entire thread. Looks like you've already made up your mind and answered your own question?
The type of care you need will depend on the species.
Tell the GAN farmer your schedule and how long you will be gone. If they are a knowledgeable and experienced ant keeper, they can sell you a species that will work with your schedule.

My local GAN farmer has actually been keeping and selling ants for years. And he actually told me that my ant colony would be fine if I keep them in my semi truck so long as the temperature and humidity is stable. He said that all the vibrations from the road would not bother them and they should adjust to it just fine. Assuming that an ant colony would survive the stress of daily travel, there is still the issue of crossing multiple state lines per week. The Gan farmer did not seem to care about that, his attitude was essentially "Who's going to know? Even if DOT Happens to search your truck and find an ant colony, odds are slim to none that it would be confiscated." Also he even invited me to a private black market ant group on Facebook. And that's about all that I am willing to share about his personal business on this forum. I am not pointing fingers or naming names.

So after four pages of everyone debating how you should care for your ants while you are away for 2-4 weeks, your real question was “Can I move colonies with a queen across State lines?”

Gosh. That topic has never been discussed on these forums.

The answer would be a big NO.

I never said that he was correct. I also never said that it would be a good idea to keep ants on a semi truck. Obviously that would be extremely illegal even if they could survive the stress of daily travel, which is doubtful. I was simply telling you what my local GAN farmer said about the whole situation. He might be a GAN farmer and be a very experienced ant keeper but he obviously has no respect for the law and even went as far as to invite me to an illegal black market ant Facebook group. The whole point of that post was to illustrate the fact that the GAN farmer being referenced is not necessarily a great source of information on ant keeping and even has some very muddy views on laws governing ant keeping.

Edited by Antapoloosa, December 14 2017 - 5:36 AM.

[Antapoloosa]

Do you know what happens when you assume? You make an [censored] out of u and me lol

[drtrmiller]

No ant can be cared for without monitoring for problems at least every few days. For a hobbyist with no experience successfully keeping ants, such attempts will be guaranteed to end in failure very swiftly.
Do what you like, however. 99% of ants kept in captivity die within the first year anyways.

what is your source for this claim of 99% of ants kept in captivity dying within the first year?

Yes, I would also like to see him cite is source because his claim seems to be completely fictitious and utterly nonsensical.

Attrition of users and ant journals on sites like this demonstrate that the vast majority of colonies kept by inexperienced hobbyists likely die off very quickly. The over-representation of minors under 18 in the hobby probably has a lot to do with this. Nevertheless, while the numerical figure was just a rough estimate, I would wager it is well over 90%.

[Antapoloosa]

No ant can be cared for without monitoring for problems at least every few days. For a hobbyist with no experience successfully keeping ants, such attempts will be guaranteed to end in failure very swiftly.
Do what you like, however. 99% of ants kept in captivity die within the first year anyways.

what is your source for this claim of 99% of ants kept in captivity dying within the first year?

Yes, I would also like to see him cite is source because his claim seems to be completely fictitious and utterly nonsensical.

Attrition of users and ant journals on sites like this demonstrate that the vast majority of colonies kept by inexperienced hobbyists likely die off very quickly. The over-representation of minors under 18 in the hobby probably has a lot to do with this. Nevertheless, while the numerical figure was just a rough estimate, I would wager it is well over 90%.

Well that makes a lot more sense now that you have explained your sources and elaborated. I thought you were speaking of ant colonies in general dying off at a rate of over 99% in the first year when kept in captivity. I assumed you were speaking of all ant colonies kept in captivity, and not only those kept by inexperienced and/or underage ant keepers but all captive ant colonies having a 99% death rate. Oops I made an [censored] out of u and me 😅

Edited by Antapoloosa, December 14 2017 - 7:49 AM.

[Serafine]

Attrition of users and ant journals on sites like this demonstrate that the vast majority of colonies kept by inexperienced hobbyists likely die off very quickly.
The over-representation of minors under 18 in the hobby probably has a lot to do with this.
Nevertheless, while the numerical figure was just a rough estimate, I would wager it is well over 90%.

Using that as an argument for "you can't leave your ants alone" is major grade nonsense. In fact it's so utterly flawed that it's hard to decide from which angle to tear it apart because there's literally NOTHING right with it.

1) There are some random deaths you cannot do anything about, they happen even to experienced antkeepers (the vast majority of these "undeterminatble deaths" happen before the queen even makes it to her first workers). However those random deaths are far below 50% - if even half of all ant queens were duds the ant species in question would have a serious survival problem.

 

2) Being young doesn't mean you can't properly keep ants. Even a 10 year old can keep ants if he read up the important stuff before and doesn't panic when unforseen stuff happens. In the same way even 30 year olds can fail at antkeeping due to stupidity or lack of research.

 

3) If 90% of the ants someone keeps die then there's something seriously wrong with the way this person cares for their ants and checking more regularly would change absolutely NOTHING about that (if anything at all it would make it better because the queens don't get disturbed all the time, so maybe they might stop eating their eggs or doing similar bad stuff they do when permanently poked).

I know people who forgot their ant colonies for MONTHS and they didn't die. Some of them grew enormously (this is especially true for Messor ants which can even extract the water they require from the seeds they eat), some survived by eating mold from the cotton and grew in numbers but produced way smaller workers than usual, some just didn't grow in numbers and stayed mostly the same - as long as there was water available barely any colony died (and the Messor colonies didn't even need that, just seeds).

 

The BY FAR biggest issue with new antkeepers is lack of patience. People check their queens and colonies way too often and risk their survival with stupid actions like shaking them into a new tube because there's a tiny black spot on the cotton.

It is pretty much common ground that colonies should be mostly left alone and not be disturbed too often, especially when they're still in their founding stage - and now you come along and tell everyone that it is absolutely vital for new antkeepers to check on their ants every few days.

That's not just flat-out false, it is HARMFUL.

[Hunter]

i was just thinking are you keeping the ants home or with you

[dermy]

One of the most notable ant related sites on the web in the very early 2000s was Myrm's ant keeping journals. He was throwing single freshly mated queens that he captured into aquariums filled with dirt and then alternating between months at home and months abroad as part of the UK navy  I think. His colonies seemed to do well enough despite the long periods away so it seems that it is possible to keep ants in captivity without tending to them for long periods. I'm not sure how he managed food and water during his away times but whatever he did was working.

Seeing as I was part of that thing I'll give a little bit of what I know about how he did what he did. In the UK there is this Ant Jelly stuff [basically it's jelly that provides the protein source] he would just leave in a container of this Jelly as well as make sure everything was well watered. As you have said his ants did fine [great even if you think about how much time away he was in fact some of his colonies are still alive to this day [His Lasius umbratus which he obtained in 2009 for example] so he must be doing something right.

Edited by dermy, December 14 2017 - 10:52 AM.

[drtrmiller]

The assumption in this conversation is of a typical hobbyist who is keeping a colony in the incipient or later stages of development, not a founding queen. None here have suggested it is necessary to check on a claustral queen very frequently until the nanitic workers arrive. None here have suggested that it is necessary to react to every degree of change, such as a speck of mold that you mentioned.

If the act of observing one's ants does not require disturbing the environment or causing alarm, then it would make no difference whatsoever whether one observes the ants hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly, except to the extent that more periodic checking would reveal catastrophic problems sooner. Human error can introduce many problems that remain invisible until they become acutely harmful to the colony.

You cannot cherry pick an exceptional case, such as Myrm's, as evidence to substantiate a recommendation for a typical, inexperienced antkeeper to be able to adequately care for a colony by only interacting with or observing it once or twice a month. The odds are extremely high that such an attempt would end in swift failure and few lessons learned. I've never said it was an impossible task, but simply that it was a cruel and wasteful way to treat a living organism, given the low probability of success.

Edited by drtrmiller, December 14 2017 - 3:55 PM.

[Reacker]

I think Myrm is probably a good case to choose from in this circumstance. It's not like he was using sophisticated methods that required tons of experience...just a big glass box full of dirt. I recall that an interesting part of his journals was him learning from experience what ant keeping was like as he at the time was a novice. This guy who is asking is similarly an adult who will be spending time away from home fairly frequently, so I think it's quite applicable to use Myrm's example.

[Serafine]

The assumption in this conversation is of a typical hobbyist who is keeping a colony in the incipient or later stages of development, not a founding queen. None here have suggested it is necessary to check on a claustral queen very frequently until the nanitic workers arrive. None here have suggested that it is necessary to react to every degree of change, such as a speck of mold that you mentioned.

You said ants can't be cared for without checking on them very few days. Guess how a newbie reading this topic will interpret it.
 

If the act of observing one's ants does not require disturbing the environment or causing alarm, then it would make no difference whatsoever whether one observes the ants hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly, except to the extent that more periodic checking would reveal catastrophic problems sooner. Human error can introduce many problems that remain invisible until they become acutely harmful to the colony.

Ants aren't retarded. There are VERY few "catastrophic events" the ants can't deal with on their own if they have alternative nesting locations in their setup they can move to (like large water tubes). And those events they cannot deal with are usually events the antkeeper cannot deal with either or only under extreme effort (parasitic mites for example).
 

You cannot cherry pick an exceptional case, such as Myrm's, as evidence to substantiate a recommendation for a typical, inexperienced antkeeper to be able to adequately care for a colony by only interacting with or observing it once or twice a month. The odds are extremely high that such an attempt would end in swift failure and few lessons learned. I've never said it was an impossible task, but simply that it was a cruel and wasteful way to treat a living organism, given the low probability of success.

If dumping a load of food (in that case unspoilable jelly) into a container attached to a colony's dirt box is an "exceptional case" we have to seriously reconsider antkeeping as a whole, because that's essentially what every antkeeper does (just more frequently because most food spoils after a few days).
It's not like "dump a bucketload of jelly into a foraging box" is a super complicated technique that requires years of experience to pull off, it's literally something a child could do.

 

Maybe you should try Myrm's method with your less active colonies, then it wouldn't matter if you neglect them (yes, I remember what you said last summer).

Edited by Serafine, December 14 2017 - 10:55 PM.

[dspdrew]

I think Myrm is probably a good case to choose from in this circumstance. It's not like he was using sophisticated methods that required tons of experience...just a big glass box full of dirt. I recall that an interesting part of his journals was him learning from experience what ant keeping was like as he at the time was a novice. This guy who is asking is similarly an adult who will be spending time away from home fairly frequently, so I think it's quite applicable to use Myrm's example.

 

I didn't read through every detail of this thread, but is this guy planning to keep his ants in a giant box of dirt? If not, then I think the results might be quite different.

 

I can say from experience that left alone for long periods of time, a small percentage of your ant colonies will die or escape. No matter how careful I am, there is always something I overlooked, and thankfully I usually catch it before too much damage is done. I try not to go for more than 3 days without checking on all of my colonies.

[drtrmiller]

I understand Serafine is trying to be helpful by over confidently stating that anyone can keep ants with almost no maintenance by following a few simple rules—and that's a conclusion with which we can find some common agreement.

However, the fact remains that a typical hobbyist cannot learn everything there is to know about keeping a colony of ants alive and well without both significant firsthand observation (i.e. empiricism), and a meaningful interpretation of that which is being observed. In my admittedly skeptical view, a couple hours observing an ant colony, once or twice a month, is an insufficient amount of time for the typical adult, untrained in biology, entomology, or insect husbandry, to develop such an understanding. Further, the mistakes typical of both lesser and more experienced hobbyists are not only more likely to be catastrophic in severity given the long time between each observation and interaction, but are also are more likely to be repeated, because an autopsy of a colony that has been dead or dying for weeks (or worse, missing) won't likely reveal too much to the layman.

In rushing to answer the question, "Can a trucker keep ants," to which the answer is "yes," because it is technically possible to do so, it is my view that everyone here has missed an opportunity for asking the unanswered question, "Should a person adopt a living organism without due time and ability to care for it and develop an understanding of its needs;" for which, based on the reasons I have described, the answer is a resounding "no"—the outcome for these living organisms will almost certainly be extremely poor, and the hobbyist will likely learn very little from the process.

Edited by drtrmiller, December 15 2017 - 12:32 AM.

[T.C.]

As to this whole 90% of colonies die thing, including like all freshly caught queens. In a good anting season I can now keep about 80% of my queens alive to the second season. That used to be like 30% back when I first started. If we where to look at this from the point of view I assume everyone is looking at. All colonies and queens kept by all hobbyists globally, I'd say around a for sure 50% die, but I wouldn't think no more than 75-80%. Not so much "colonies" but founding queens for sure.

Like I caught 25 Camponotous pennsylvanicus queens this season, and only 5 lived. Not sure what was up with it and I realize this isn't a fair comparison since I am only using one species for evidence. But getting all colonies past the founding stages... all odds are stacked against you it seems.

[drtrmiller]

Hey TC. There are folks with a "green thumb" who can grow plants, understand the subtle signs of distress and disease, and know how to deal with issues as the arise. And then there are folks who never learn, and quickly kill every plant they own their entire life, no matter how hardy. Ants are similar to plants in that the behaviors they exhibit to stresses are subtle and not always intuitive (at least not without some background in biology). Many people will learn how to care for ants, but some never will. But if one with no empirical experience is only allowed to spend a couple hours with their ants once or twice a month, he or she may never learn what he or she is doing right or wrong.

Edited by drtrmiller, December 14 2017 - 11:38 PM.

[T.C.]

Yeah, I'm one of those people with plants. My brother grew pumpkins as big as me, yet my little garden overgrown with weeds (there is the problem I guess) has 50 pumpkin plants where the actual pumpkins never exceeded the size of grapes. Was always a disappointment.

In the anting aspect, yeah I'm about as good as I'm gonna get. I have gotten some large colonies but still screw things up. I'm neutral I guess. And that's after spending a few hours a week for the last 5 years with ants. Eh, I'm just a hobbyist trying to make the best of everything.

[dermy]

In the anting aspect, yeah I'm about as good as I'm gonna get. I have gotten some large colonies but still screw things up. I'm neutral I guess. And that's after spending a few hours a week for the last 5 years with ants. Eh, I'm just a hobbyist trying to make the best of everything.

Kind of in the same boat. I've been keeping ants for over 10 years almost now and I still have yet to get a good colony going. I have reasons why I don't but can't change them during this time. One day I'll get a really nice colony going.  But yeah there is a lot of failure in Ant Keeping, it isn't as rosy and fun as you may have been led on to believe.

[Reacker]

 

I think Myrm is probably a good case to choose from in this circumstance. It's not like he was using sophisticated methods that required tons of experience...just a big glass box full of dirt. I recall that an interesting part of his journals was him learning from experience what ant keeping was like as he at the time was a novice. This guy who is asking is similarly an adult who will be spending time away from home fairly frequently, so I think it's quite applicable to use Myrm's example.

 

I didn't read through every detail of this thread, but is this guy planning to keep his ants in a giant box of dirt? If not, then I think the results might be quite different.

 

I can say from experience that left alone for long periods of time, a small percentage of your ant colonies will die or escape. No matter how careful I am, there is always something I overlooked, and thankfully I usually catch it before too much damage is done. I try not to go for more than 3 days without checking on all of my colonies.

 

He doesn't seem to have concrete plans to do one thing or another, just basic information gathering of the sort that you'd expect from the type of conscience adult who might be a good candidate to succeed in the same way that Myrm did. I'm not going to tell him it's not possible when there's a concrete example of someone who succeeded despite keeping a variety of species, being gone for even longer periods of time while having access only to the small amount of information available online at the time, and being similarly new to the hobby.

 

I'm not saying that every single 10 year old should immediately buy some ants and big chunks of plastic from Mikey and then leave for a few weeks; only saying that it's clearly possible for an adult to do it with some proper planning.

 

I don't know why some of you are being so negative about this; it's not as though any of you are masterful ant keepers who have colonies that never die. Every last one of you is taking animals from the wild and keeping them in environments that will almost surely kill them for what ultimately reduces down to your own personal amusement. If this guy does his research like he is beginning to do now and makes an earnest effort there is no difference between him and you even if he fails and all of his ants die.

[Reacker]

In rushing to answer the question, "Can a trucker keep ants," to which the answer is "yes," because it is technically possible to do so, it is my view that everyone here has missed an opportunity for asking the unanswered question, "Should a person adopt a living organism without due time and ability to care for it and develop an understanding of its needs;" for which, based on the reasons I have described, the answer is a resounding "no"—the outcome for these living organisms will almost certainly be extremely poor, and the hobbyist will likely learn very little from the process.

 

You could say the same about nearly every hopeful ant keeper, most of which don't have the ability to care for their ants or to develop an understanding of their needs. Weren't you just suggesting that at least 90% of all captive colonies die? Clearly by your own admission the outcome for "for these living organisms [is] certainly extremely poor," even for hobbyists that aren't gone for long periods of time. I would also suggest that most hobbyists "likely learn very little from the process" regardless of their profession.

 

If you're so concerned about captive ants dying then perhaps you should be doing age checks before selling your ant keeping products to children who will surely be killing their ants regardless of what brand of sugar water they feed them. At least that way you're not encouraging more children to capture ants so that they can suffer extremely poor outcomes and cause the kids to learn very little. That sounds a lot more effective a measure than anything you could type in this thread.

 

Edit: Let's also not forget that we're discussing a type of animal that we eradicate in the hundreds of millions whenever they become slightly inconvenient in our human environments. The value of their lives is not very high....

Edited by Reacker, December 15 2017 - 1:09 PM.