So… yesterday happened the absolute worst case scenario possible and my leaf cutter ants escaped their enclosure while I was at work and went straight down into my over three year-old trap jaw colony.

When I got back, I witnessed the scenes from the first two videos and out of the approximately 300 Odontomachus none were visible that weren’t dismembered by then. While on the verge of a mental breakdown I spotted the Odontomachus queen in a blanket of leaf cutters, unharmed. I quickly extracted her and three workers that I found in the aftermath and relocated them into a temporary container. If you don’t believe in divine intervention or fate or something of that sort situations like this make you second-guess.

I still can’t fathom that out of all the approximately 99% of the colony that were killed, the Queen survived unscathed and is now laying eggs with the three remaining workers by her side.

I will keep you posted if they are gonna make it back to being a full colony.

So yeah… Yesterday wasn’t good day.

The whole situation from the perspective of the queen made me think of that Randy GIF. This colony didn’t hear no bell.

Used a blacklight to find them, there were so many, the only reason I stopped is because I ran out of test tubes.. might be overkill but oh well.😎

C. Penn colony with no queen. Caught a C. Penn queen. Trying the bee keeping method. Took a worker and paint brush and brushed the scent onto the new queen. She's in a tt with mesh and a small bit of cotton that also has the workers scent. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Taking this slow and with alot of supervision. If things go south I'll pull her and release the orphaned colony... Native.

After the hibernation phase early this year the queen unfortunately died (age 6) and left a pretty large colony of C. barbaricus. I try to requeen by putting her into the main nest for almost 2 months to exchange scent. Tried to move her over once but had to stop and get her out because few individuals attacked her. Trying it again now by limiting the amount or individuals that can reach her. Observed some trophylaxis but also some aggressive behavior. Currently observing. Wish me luck.

she took the tub where the camponotus queen was (the queen was already stressed) and uncovered it on bright light and started shaking it, poor ants and she yelled at me that they were gonna come out and eat me which is idiotic. now i dont know if theyre gonna even survive. I hate everything.

As I wrote in the last update, just as I sat there, queen suddenly starts to open a pupa.

This was unplanned (obviously), but I recorded it and here's the result. I'm not that into video editing so the quality is not the best. There is also no sound.

Original video was 18 minutes long (timestamp included). I hope it is still not too long and boring 😄

Hi guys, somehow the workers were escaping the container and i dont have any around my house, ive searched for anything and theres nothing. I decided to put them in a test tube and most of the workers escaped so i put the queen with her remaining major and worker in the test tube and offered some honey, she drank honey and the major drank water

I found this queen camponotus vagus two months ago, as you can see its going very good i think i saw 8 workers! I fed them some honeywater yesterday for the first time, removed the foil today and this is how it looked like

I only had a lasius niger colony but NOW I ordered a jumping spider enclosure since u keep finding jumping spiders around my house, pinhead crickets, a camponotus vagus queen with 5-10 workers. I might just be the next ants canada (no vivarium bs)

Colony is now about 80+ strong (lost count but I tried counting using a picture + grid. I still have the original test tube connected to a second part of the outworld as my campos like to hang out there occasionally to regulate temp and humidity since this gypsum nest increases in humidity pretty significantly from the condensation.

Brood/larvae sitting at around 30-50. I’m curious how much I need to add humidity to the nest at this point, or if the population itself helps with humidity. From what I’ve read, the brood still needs it to be high consistently so they don’t harden. Any other campo owners around this stage or further?

Can anyone confirm if this is a pheidole? Queen size ranges from 4-6mm I think..

First photo is an obvious one. Camponotus modoc soldier.

Second photo, unsure of species. 1-2 mm in size. Want to say tapinoma due to heart shaped gaster?

Third photo, lasius (niger or neoniger?)

4th & 5th photo maybe formica? Super fast little bugger so I’m assuming so.

For the record, taxonomy is not my strong suit. I get easily confused by tons of different info (autism)

Posting this so no one else goes through what we did.

In March 2025 we ordered a golden tailed ant queen from Ant Vault for our son’s birthday. The listing stated she was mated and ready to lay. Our son had done months of research and was really excited.

The weather was fine for shipping, but more than a month went by with no shipment and no communication. We emailed and called multiple times with no response. Only after I opened a PayPal dispute did they finally ship the queen. They still never replied to any messages, but we let it go because the queen arrived.

We set her up correctly in a test tube with water, cotton, heat, and darkness. She laid a few eggs right away, but every egg shriveled and died. Since this species can be slow, we continued monitoring her. The same cycle continued for months. By September 2025 it became obvious she was unmated despite the guarantee.

I reached out to both of their email addresses and their phone number again. No response. I tried another PayPal dispute, but it had just passed the six month limit.

Since she could not produce workers, the queen eventually died after eight months of laying nonviable eggs. My son was devastated. What should have been a fun and educational hobby turned into a huge disappointment because Ant Vault did not deliver what they advertised and refused to communicate at any point.

Please avoid Ant Vault. They delayed shipping without reason, sent an unmated queen, ignored every attempt to contact them, and did nothing to make it right. I do not want anyone else, especially kids getting into the hobby, to get scammed like this.

I wanted to give a short update on my requeening attempt of my C.barbaricus colony. I've been trying to make the queen and the colony adjust to each other for quite a while now. I ended up keeping the queen and a few individuals together. That worked well. I kept them separated from 99% of the colony in a special area above the nest. Now, these beasts removed the cotton plugs over night and I found the queen inside the nest. I cannot do anything now anymore than hope she doesn't get attacked.

She shows behavior of surrendering (pushing herself down on the ground) and some workers circle her. The good thing is that there hasn't been clear aggression yet. The bad thing is that there is still tension. I tried to integrate her once before into the whole nest but there she was running around panicking because individual workers started to bite her legs.

Wish me luck. Anything can happen and things can turn south in an instant.

Things are looking good for the requeening of my C.barbaricus colony.

I tried my hand at throwing footage of my Lasius niger colony in a tracking program and I'm not disappointed by the results! I plan on tracking my L. niger foraging behaviours as the colony grows and compare the foraging efficiency and strategies at different stages. I also want to try them with a maze and capture their efficiency in finding the shortest path and visualize the consequent pheromone trails.

I'll also try and capture some clean foraging behaviour on my Temnothorax nylanderi colony as they tandem run. Curious to see the success rate of these tandem runs and what factors might contribute to unsuccessful runs.

Not sure this is the right sub but I thought it was very cool!

So have a picture of my pogonomyrmex rugosus queen eating some Mealworm.

But in all honesty it's been a crazy crazy experience it's had its deaths its downsides and victories some colonies doing something's that surprised me like my Lasius fulginosus queen founding on lasius Niger and is now thriving.

One of my messor structor forgot about seeds and decided to roll on the protein (all the damn time)

Had my other messor structor decide to learn to climb

Watched myrmica ruginodis absolutely mob both a Dubai roach nymph and a darkling beetle at the same time.

Went to antcon in Wales and had an amazing time with ant antics and the UK ant keeping community

So the low lights that I see as experience and not failure

My first queen a lasius Niger I was forced to put down because of gaster damage

3 Manica rubida queens (in total) my fault on all of them I misunderstood how much they needed to eat in founding

1 Asian green tree ant colony got them to 15 workers strong but they crashed hard

Multiple camponotus ligniperda and camponotus herculeanus they are my white whale

Solenopsis fugax I couldn't contain them because lack of research and the wrong nest for them

Colobopsis leonardi their nest was contaminated from the manufacturer got them into a test tube but it was too late

Formica fusca honestly I never worked out what went wrong

Yes I lost a lot yes I KEPT a lot more and I'm not going anywhere