My Sweet Ant Farm
February 26th, 2008
Part of the the haul of sweet birthday loot I received last week was this neat ant farm – funnily enough, I was about to buy myself one. It’s one of those filled with “space age gel”, which I suspect is really just blue agar, but perhaps some ant farmer reading this can tell me.
The little strings of bubbles in the above image show where I’ve poked a few starter tunnels in the gel for my future pets. I’m tremendously excited to get the ant farm up and running (’farm’ is really a misnomer, because I don’t think my ants will produce any commercially viable products). The problem is, I don’t have any ants. So I built myself this crude jam-filled ant trap, and stuck it by my outdoor bin. Err… it hasn’t caught any ants yet.
Still, I live in hope. Apparently you can buy ants online, but come on. The damn things outnumber humans a million to one. How hard can it be to find some ants? Anyway, the instructions that came with my super-deluxe space age gel ant farm also warned me:
Sounds like a challenge!
Entry Filed under: General
|
|
|
|
14 Comments
1. Ian | February 26th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Fit a dividing wall, build two colonies of different species of ant, then let the battle commence!
2. Priya Raju | February 26th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
People actually want ants in their house?! Eek!
I think I killed about 300 of them yesterday with a spray, as they were attempting to bivouac in my living room carpet.
I think they are plotting to lay siege to my plum jam now. I’ll catch the lot & send them to you.
3. Brendon | February 26th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
Can we all come and live in the ant farm Frank? It seems similar to London.
4. Ant Farm Woes « ide&hellip | February 27th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
[...] Ant Lion Farm and the Triassic Triops. PS – I’d like to wish Science Punk better luck with his new antfarm. He’s all ready off to a good start by trying to catch his own ants. Maybe I’ll try the [...]
5. baconcurlyq | February 28th, 2008 at 5:19 am
If there’s an ant cage match, I want to see a movie of that on here!
6. Chiral | February 28th, 2008 at 8:36 am
That looks like a home only fitting for space age ants.
7. Antony B | February 28th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
I remember reading somebody’s account of an ant war in such a tank.
A quick google and here it is.
Just promise us that if you do initiate a “300 with ants” scenario, you set up some kind of high-speed macro video to capture the action.
8. culinarian | March 1st, 2008 at 4:19 pm
I’m pretty sure you need a queen to start a colony… very much like honey bees. Otherwise, the ants are just trapped and will eventually die without direction and purpose.
9. Frank the SciencePunk | March 1st, 2008 at 8:21 pm
@ culinarian: All workers are female, and I think if shielded from the queen ant’s chemical signals, will develop into a queen. I’d have to Google it to be sure…
10. Sven | March 3rd, 2008 at 2:05 pm
So, as I consider myself an hobby antologist,
I have to let you know that these “space farms” considered
harmfull, the ants in the container are exposed to light and the only reason why they are going to dig tunnels is because theyre desperatly trying to escape, If you want to get to know how antfarms work (its a real cool hobby if you dont have a girlfriend)
check Wikipedia for Formicarium,
Greetz from germany, I hope my english is not that bad,
11. Jen | March 3rd, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Frank, my 5-minute research on the subject says nay to comment #9. Development of a queen is dependent on environmental factors and diet during the egg and larvae stages. A colony without a queen will be short-lived as there are no means for reproduction.
12. Frank the SciencePunk | March 3rd, 2008 at 3:00 pm
@ Jen: that’s a shame. Although my parent’s garden is beseiged with flying ants each summer, which I presume are virgin queens setting off to start new colonies. Then I’d just need a few studs, and have them mate…. this ant farming business is getting to be a lot of work…
13. Y4R0SLEV | May 5th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
if comment #10 is true then you could just put a blanket or something over the ant farm so it is dark then take it off to look at the ants
14. Randi, Live Ants Lady | November 14th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
http://www.live-ants.com for ant farm ants – the reson you buy them is these for sure make tunnels where many yard ants do not, AND you know the diet of these ants, where yard ants eat all sorts of different things. :-)
Trackback this post