Ant Farm Update #3: Failure
July 30th, 2008
Bill from Greece prompted me to let you all know how my ant farm was going: it’s not. I watched my ants desperately trying to escape for several weeks, and then they began dying for reasons unknown (I suspect that, upon failing to escape the Perspex prison, they instead trained their efforts on escaping the mortal coil, and willed themselves to death).
Anyhow, enough was enough I thought, and decided to set loose my remaining pets. I took the farm to the place I first kidnapped some ants from and shook out all the survivors, all the while singing ‘Born Free’ at the top of my lungs. I imagine they were received by the colony in a midst of shock and happiness, given showers and then whisked off for interviews on primetime ant talk shows.
What next? I plan to get some more determined, less spirited ants for my farm. I washed out the farm so any new ants wouldn’t go apeshit when they smelled the haunting deathly echoes of the previous occupants, and soaked the gel in water so it could soften (one theory being that the previous ants didn’t burrow because the gel had dried out).
I’ll need to find some more ants, perhaps even some flying ones that are about at the moment, which I think are virgin queens or something but to me they’re just impressionable teenager ants who’ve just left home and will be much more appreciative of a new pad, even one filled with blue gel.
So on it goes. Pictures to follow.
Entry Filed under: General
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2 Comments
1. Ian | July 30th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Blue gel, eh, so that’s how you lure them in…
2. Chapstick | July 30th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
When I was a kid my dad made me a formicarium out of three lengths of wood and a couple of sheets of perspex and alternating layers of soil and sand sandwiched between them. I experienced the same disappointing results as you until dad heroically raided an ant’s nest with a trowel and made of with a few juvenile queens and some accompanying workers. They bit the fuck out of him but it worked a treat – at least for a few weeks, before all the queens matured and flew off. So I think the workers really won’t do much without the motivation of a queen to work for.
I think your idea of attracting some flying ants is a good one. I believe that if you see a big fat one wandering about without wings it’s a queen that’s just mated so if you gather up a few of them and trap them inside with a food source (I used to feed mine with a piece of cotton wool soaked in sugar saturated water) that may well do the trick.
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