File :-(, x, )
Anonymous
so i bought this pretty cool looking ant farm that i thought would look nick on my desk, but when i went to order my ant i noticed that the site doesnt send out queens too so i was wondering if any one knew where i could order a queen and and starter group of worker. because an ant farm sans the queen just doesnt sound as neat
>> Anonymous
Is getting an ant farm worth it and easy to care for? I think ants are interesting, but I don't want to clean their home or touch them.
>> Anonymous
>>72608
You do nothing. Nothing at all. Just don't move the case too much. Most of the gel they send *instead of sand* is edible so you don't have to feed them either
>> Anonymous
OP, is pic the antfarm and if so where did you get it, that is fucking sick as hell.
>> Anonymous
i also have one but without the l.e.d lights, im planning on digging up a ants nest in the summer and stealing there queen and some works
>> Anonymous
>>72619

So, if I leave them alone for 5 years, they can manage themselves?

Sounds awesome.
>> Anonymous
>>72604
i have the same AntWorks and it is really interesting to watch the ants working. it is suggested in the manual that you make a few holes to the gel so that the ants would know to start dig the tunnels from there, but my ants just ignored them and started their own ones.
as for is it easy to care for, you dont have to do anything. you wont see any ant poo or nothing like that, and when your ants die the other ants will carry those ants out of the tunnels to the surface and you just remove the dead ants yourself.
and about the queens. i have read that some people managed to catch a queen from nature and thought it was cool to have a queen in their antworks. but the queen killed all the workers, blocked every tunnel and stayed in one chamber where she laid eggs and guarded those. i dont know if the eggs hatched but even if they would have, there would be no-one to care for them. i personally just hunt ants from the nature and put them to the antworks, and when they are all dead I just get new ones. i think it is really cool to see how the new ants react to the tunnels and how they improve or modify them.
have fun with your antworks!
>> Anonymous
>>72624

Do they eventually eat all the gel?
>> Anonymous
I'm not sure anyone sells colonies with queens.
>> Anonymous
>>72627

Why not? Are they mean to their worker ants like another Anonymous said?
>> Anonymous
>>72626
dont know about that but thats a lot of gel to eat :D
>> Anonymous
one more thing that is cool about the antwork and the ants in there: team-fucking-work. you know that in movies when there is a fire going on, you'll see people make a bucket chain and you assume that this happens in movies only. but that is so real in antworks. when they are digging a tunnel, there is only one ant cutting pieces from the gel with her jaws, then he passes the junk of gel to the ant behind her and starts to cut another piece while the ants make a chain to move all the junk out of the tunnel. that is so amazing, and in the package with the antwork they will give you 2 magnifying glasses so you can see the stuff that the ants do up close. oh and ants do sleep, that is so relaxing to watch. usually they all go to the same chamber to sleep and few workers stay up and do stuff.
>> Anonymous
if the gel is edible and they end up eating it all, does that mean they will be wading in their own poo in the end?
>> Anonymous
     File :-(, x)
>>72624
"it is suggested in the manual that you make a few holes to the gel so that the ants would know to start dig the tunnels from there, but my ants just ignored them and started their own ones"

like this?
>> Anonymous
>>72628
In the US, you can't buy queen ants because of the risk of introducing a certain species to a non-native area. Basically to keep them from running rampant or causing ecological problems.

Rather than allowing certain species and outlawing others, they just made it illegal. Because US sucks.
>> Anonymous
THEY SELL THESE ON THINKGEEK.COM !
>> Anonymous
>>72634
yep, just like that. but my ants started 2 tunnels which are both on the other ends and now they united those tunnels with one tunnel running all the way from the other side to the other
>> Anonymous
Is it ok to put other types of bugs with the ants in the ant farm? For instance, can I mix it up with small spiders, silver fish, and roaches?
>> Anonymous
how much of my sidewalk do i have to dig up before i can find a queen?
>> Anonymous
>>72657
I think you'll have to tear up the whole block.
>> Anonymous
>>72634
are you a girl or a boy!?@#$%
>> Anonymous
Thanks, /an/. Now I want an ant farm.
>> Anonymous
>>72634
I don't care what gender you are.

I want to stick my tongue down your throat and fuck you in the ass. :O
>> Anonymous
>>72669
Not me, I found that pic on thinkgeek. lol I had the same trouble distinguishing the person's gender, but it looks like a little boy.
>> Anonymous
>>72674
Yeah same...
>> Anonymous
Pedos...

Bet you'd like to have a little boy farm instead.
>> Anonymous
God dammit, /an/, now I want one.
>> Anonymous
http://crcw.mb.ca/php3/ledsign/redir.php
http://crcw.mb.ca/php3/ledsign/redir.php
http://crcw.mb.ca/php3/ledsign/redir.php
http://crcw.mb.ca/php3/ledsign/redir.php
>> Anonymous
>>72656
if you take ants from one nest and mix them with ants from another nest, you will have yourself an epic battle. ants are aggressive. one time i got myself a male ant and thought that i would put him to my antwork, and i found that ant from the same place where i had collected the other ants so i thought that they are from the same colony. i put the male ant to the antwork and was like "yea, hes surrounded by hawt ant chicks", but when one ant spotted him with her antennas she immediately started to bite him and other ants joined in and eventually they killed him. later i found out that in the world of ants, male ants are only produced to make more worker ants. after that, all the male ants get kicked out of the colony and thats why you have one time in the summer when there are ants flying everywhere. those ants are all the male ones flying away from the colony to die.
as to other bugs, i think the result will be same than with another ant colonies colliding. i have thought about catching a small spider and dropping it to the antwork after the ants have settled to their now environment. that is to give the ants some action to their life, to keep them on their toes :)
>> Anonymous
>>72740
You're incredibly ill-informed.

There is, of course, a queen who is the mother of an entire colony. Yes, all worker and soldier ants are sterile 'females.' But they lack the internal sex organs and mating pheromones and so are effectively neuter. Winged ants are fertile, and are either male or female. Ants make in the air, so the mating swarms you're talking about are basically big ant incest orgies. After that, the males die and the females land to start new colonies as queens (their wings fall off). In most species of ants (as their wasp and bee cousins), ants mate only once in their lifetime and can lay eggs from then on.
>> Anonymous
>>72745
thanks for clearing that up. so basically i picked up a queen thinking it was a male and the other ants killed it?
and i didnt know that the females could fly, i have always thought that only males will fly to mate but apparently i was wrong. thanks anon
>> Anonymous
I'm curious, if you could find a queen that had already mated and catch it instead of digging one up, would it work in the ant farm?
>> Anonymous
>>72816
Yes!
I did so more than five times already. They started their own colony. I gave all colonies away except my favourite.
http://p211.ezboard.com/bantfarm
>> Anonymous
     File :-(, x)
I do so love informative topics like these. Beats the heck out of the usual POST UR CUDDLY FURBALLS <3 <3 dreck we usually get.

To stay on topic: is there a recommended brand of ant farm? I never did much bug-watching as a kid, but a few semesters of bio have given me a healthy appreciation of hymenopterans. I figure it's past time I had a chance to observe their ecology and life cycle in a controlled environment.
>> Anonymous
just find an anthill and dig one up. There the queens are the biggest ones. but make shure its not the red ants.
>> Anonymous
I bought one of these, it was cool. Then it grew a ton of mold and all the ants died. I cut out 80% of the gel to remove the mold and found ONE lone survivor. He lived in solitude for a month then died. Now the rest of it is getting moldy again.

How do I prevent moldiness?
>> Anonymous
>>72932
Why would red ants be any different from other "wild caught" ones?
>> Anonymous
>>73328
Its a fucking fire ant.
ever get bit by them?

imagine you're fire ant farm falling over and now you have to deal with those biting fuckers.
they can kill people if they are allergic.
>> Anonymous
>>73335

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_ant
>> Anonymous
>>73327
That sounds disgusting...

Maybe getting a gel Antfarm isn't the best way to go.

I think I might get the average dirt farm and throw bits of junk food in to feed 'em.

They can eat anything, right?
>> Anonymous
What if you were to combine a regular computer keyboard with an ant farm? It would sell like hot cakes I tell you! Ant Farm Keyboard FTW....just hope they don't start eating the RAM and get super intelligent
>> Anonymous
>>73370
Yes because we all know the average keyboard is loaded to the brim with lots of RAM, that if eaten could potentially unlock the secret of life in the universe...
>> Anonymous
>>73940
I wouldn't put an ant farm in the keyboard. Angry n00bs tend to flail and smack their keyboard in anger.
>> Anonymous
>>73327
For some reason, unknown even to me, this made me lol heartily.
>> Anonymous
>>73335
I've not only gotten bitten by them, I've wrestled through an entire nest of them while drunk and and to go hose the right half of my body off. I was just curious if they'd be any different to keep as long as you didn't knock them over or anything like that.