Ant Farm Project - #02 - Preparing and Connecting the Farm

Hello lovely Hiveans !

In my last entry about our Ant Farm Project I showed and described the arena and the nest to you in a bit more detail. In this episode I like to show to you how the arena is decorated for the chosen ant colony. In addition I will show you some preparations of the nest, which are necessary, and show you which nutrition will be used for the chosen ant colony ^^

Decoration of the Arena

The species that my wife chose to cultivate in the ant farm is the Messsor Barbarus species. These are actually from the Mediterranean region. In this area the vegetation is from the scrubland type, only rarely distributed, and the climate is rather drought and warm, with a sandy to rocky ground. Therefore we chose fine gravel as the arena floor material. Fine gravel has the advantage over materials such as earth and sand, as it does not mold. But it has to be fine gravel so that the ants will have no big problems by walking and navigating over it or squeeze their leftover food in the gaps. As the species of Messor Barbarus is a relative large species in general, we also do not fear that the gaps between the individual stones are large enough so that they fall inside with their legs.

In addition my wife and son went outside in search of some flat stones and thin branches that we can implement into the scenery. The flat stone does not only feature an alternating floor material for them, but is also a great place where we can live insects for nutrition later on. Ants can be quite barbaric in taking apart their food and this sturdy stone is great as it can be easily replaced if necessary and the leftover insect parts are not falling inside the gravel. At least we hope that this works out as planned 😄 .. So far we only used one stone and no branches, but we kept them in case we need to alter the setup a bit. From now, whenever I go to the forest with my son, we will also keep looking for other cool interior for the ant arena. We already added two drinking containers, one with water and one with sugar water for the start.

One thing that is very important before adding any materials to the arena, is that they are properly washed and sterilized beforehand. The gravel and the stones were washed multiple times with cold water to remove all the dust grains from it and subsequently heated in the oven at 150°C for 30 minutes. It does not sound important, but as ants are so small the dust can damage their respiratory system and not properly sterilized material can introduce pathogens in some cases 😉

Preparation of the Nest

For the preparation of the nest, we filled a syringe with cold water and introduced it to the middle of the nest. The gypsum was watered this way and the humidity of the nest was raised. This is important as ant colonies require a lot of humidity to accept a nest as a possible home. The Messor Barbarus species does not like too high humidity, which we really like, but their are species that demand a really high humidity and thus nests that has to be water quite a lot. Luckily, gypsum is a material that is quite easy to be watered and does not mold ^^ This is a big advantage over other materials. gypsum in general is easy to handle, has many good properties and advantages and is cheap. If we ever need to build a bigger nest and arena by ourselves, we will use gypsum too, but this has time 😁

Another thing that has to be considered is that ants are quite light sensitive. Their nests has to be dark so that they feel comfortable and are not stressed out. Stress is really bad to ants, as they will not reproduce anymore and even start to eat their own eggs. This is related to their natural behavior, as stress and light in their nests is usually related to attacks from other ant colonies or similar threats. Therefore we put a thin red foil on the top of the nest. Ants cant detect the red light of the spectrum and therefor think that it is dark in the est. In addition the red foil allows us to look inside of the nest so that we can still observe what is happening inside 😎

The arena was connected to the nest with a short hose with diameter of 1 cm. The other side of the arena will be later on connected to the reagent glass which already contains the starting Messor Barbaros ant colony. In the beginning they will probably stay inside the reagent glass and wont move to the nest directly, so that putting the arena in-between is a great way to position everything. But if the colony grows bigger and we managed to figure out the proper temperature and humidity for the nest, they will move in. But this may take some time. Patience and preventing stress is most important when handling ant colonies, as well as maintaining the proper temperature and humidity in the nest 😁

Nutrition for the Colony

The Messor Barbarus species are mainly collectors and prefer corn and grains as their main nutrition source. Therefor we have a big baggy full of different kind of grains. In this aspect our ants are not very selective and will accept everything ^^ .. still, a good mixture of carbohydrates (grains) and proteins (insects) is important for a healthy colony. Its just that every species has its preferrences ;)

In addition the the grain nutrition we bought a box of house cricket. These will be a really nice source of protein for the colony. They are also rather small compared to other usable insects, which is good when the colony is still very small. It is also important that the insects are given already dead. Living insects would fight back and their presence will produce stress and and possible fight will risk the live of the ant workers which is critical for small colonies. We believe that in the beginning days of the ant farm the ant wont accept proteins as they first have to handle the stress of the moving in and have to adapt to the new environment. We also have some fruit flies that we want to test out. But as said, the Messor Barbarus mainly favor grains, but proteins are important for the queen to produce eggs and thus for the evolution of the whole colony 😉

Thank You

Thank you very much for reading through the second edition of the Ant Farm Project. The project is mainly run by my wife and son, but I am allowed to document it here in my blog, that I mainly use as a documentary blog of great moments of my and my families life in the first place anyway. I really love what they are trying to set up there and happily observe every little progress on their way. In the next episode I will finally show you the Messor Barbarus colony and how they get connected to the arena. I hope you find this project interesting and stay tuned for the next episode ^^