Finding ants

[Kayota]

My area used to be abundant with ants but now with the addition of new subdivisions and the like on my street, more rich-*** snobs are using more ant deterrents, and I believe as a result that the ants are disappearing. This happens to be hindering my current project, building an ant farm out of a 10 gallon tank, some grass and dirt, and some ants. So how do I go about finding ants? Thanks for any help you give me.

 

[Trapper7]

Come to Florida. I have more than enough in my yard!

 

[Kayota]

LOL yeah, I used to be able to find them anywhere. Feh. I also need the ant hill itself, because I need the queen ant. I think I'm going to order ants for now from the internet and find my queen ant and her colony once the ordered ants die off.

 

[Ant]

wait until a mating flight, you wont be finding many ants at this time of year... I usually find tetramorium queens in pools and a lot end up mated. I recently let go a colony I started awhile back, living me with none but they are pretty fun.

 

[bluebird]

I used to want to have a ant colony when I was a kid I got those ant farms hoping I'd get a queen one day I didn't knew they just sent the workers..

Goodluck with your project hope it goes well.

 

[Ant]

its illegal to ship live ant queens

 

[seedjar]

My roommate left lots of candy wrappers around the house and I ended up with an ant colony nesting inside a box in my kitchen! I still have it - emptied it out except for the plastic carton thing they were laying eggs on and now it lives with my highland Neps. They're still going strong like three months later - I've fed them sugar or honey a few times, but for the most part they just subsist. I doubt that method would work for you (or be acceptable for your parents ) but I can say that having them around is pretty neat. I don't know if it makes a difference, but the box was full of those individually-packaged bottles of Chinese ginseng extract.
~Joe

 

[bluebird]

its illegal to ship live ant queens

Yeah I know that now that I'm older, but when I was 5 or 6 I didn't think much about that type of stuff...

 

[Ant]

lol, ok. Not many adults are aware of that law either.