In ant keeping, there are a few basic golden rules of ethics, that most ant keepers follow.
First, don't keep non-local ants.
Doing so endangers your ecosystem and the ants themselves.
Second, pre-kill your prey insects.
It's cruel and can be dangerous to your ants to feed live prey.
And finally, we ant keepers know to never, ever mix your colonies together.
This would cause an ant war.
Today, I broke this last rule, because I had heard that Yellow Crazy Ants can fuse colonies.
In fact, the Golden Empire today, as we saw in a past video, is the result of two colonies
that joined forces.
This is why when I received this new 5 queen colony of yellow crazy ants, it never occurred
to me that the ants would end up going to war!
AC Family, sit tight because today, we will see what can happen when the basic rules of
ant keeping are broken!
Will there be mass death from an ant war, or will the ants join forces?
AC Family, Put on your strongest of armour and carry your most solid sheilds, as we watch
an epic battle unfold before our very eyes!
It's every ant keeper's nightmare, and delight to all of those who have asked me to war my
ant colonies.
You won't want to miss all the ant action ahead so keep on watching until the end.
A warning to all ant keepers out there not to try this with your ants at home.
This episode was not planned the way it turned out, but what happened will surely shock you!
Gather round AC Family, and let's learn about the amazing ways of ant colony fusion and
ant war in another action-packed epsiode where we marvel at the amazing world of ants, here
on the AntsCanada Ant Channel.
Please subscribe to my videos!
You won't regret entering this ant universe!
Hit that bell icon, too, to join the AC notification squad.
Enjoy!
So before the ant lovers of the world start attacking me, here's my defense.
Someone offered me this large Yellow Crazy Ant colony through the GAN Project, and I
at first was hestitant to take them.
The Golden Empire was still recovering from their mite infestation, and I was happy with
their growth in size since I first got them.
But then, I went back to what our mite biologist told us about what causes mites to enter their
phoretic state, meaning the life stage where they go from beneficial mites that eat the
ants' garbage, to hitchhikers where they attach themselves to the ants' bodies.
The mite biologist had said that one of the causes of mite phoresis is if the ants were
already suffering from a health condition, if the ants' health was somehow compromised
in the first place.
So, in light of this, I also knew that the larger an ant colony is, the greater chance
of success they have at thriving because with more workers, it means they can acquire more
food for the colony, keep the nest cleaner and better maintained, have babies better
fed and protected, and generally carry out all the necessary tasks required for a healthy
colony.
This is how I came to decide that, yes, perhaps adding this large 5 queen colony of healthy
ants to our Golden Empire, a 3 queen colony, might prove beneficial at speeding up the
riddance of our ants' phoretic mites.
Tonight, I was going to break our third golden rule of ant keeping ethics.
I did it before with this colony, and other than one of the queens retaliating for a bit,
it was fine.
I assumed this induced colony fusion now would alos prove to be problem-free.
But little did I know, I was in for a shocking surprise.
Night fell, and the new colony was in place.
If you've been AC family for awhile now, you know the drill.
We'll be using light and heat to move our new ants into the Hacienda Del Dorado, the
lush kingdom of our Golden Empire.
The tube which was to be the bridge into the Hacienda Del Dorado was covered with baby
powder on one end to keep the ants inside the terrarium from crawling out.
I unwrapped the container to reveal the new foreign 5 queen colony.
woah look at all those ants.
They were restless in their container.
I was told the colony was quite agitated these past few days, perhaps because they were tired
of living in their plastic container.
This move was going to be easy.
So my plan was to disconnect this tube which connects the main nest container to their
outworld, and connect this tube leading to the Hacienda Del Dorado to this hole.
As for the ants in the outworld, I would dump them directly into the Hacienda Del Dorado
afterward.
I would then place the bright light over their current container to encourage them to move
out.
Here we go, AC Family.
It was time.
Time to mix these two yellow crazy ants together.
Here we go!
The
ants moved in and quickly started carrying brood out of the container and into the tubes.
All seemed to be going as planned.
The very first worker entered the Hacienda Del Dorado without problems.
It was so fast that I hadn't seen where it went.
I assumed it had found the nest under the driftwood where the Golden Empire were nested.
Without thinking anything wrong would happen, I allowed my cameras to run for two hours,
and left them to join forces.
2 hours later, I came back to a horrific sight!
The new colony had moved completely into the Hacienda Del Dorado, but something didn't
look right.
The ants seemed to be clumping!
What is happening here.
With a closer look, I was shocked.
To my surprise, the Golden Empire and this new 5 queen colony had engaged in an epic
ant war!
Workers were locked together, biting legs, mandibles locked, many ants clearly in agony!
Oh no!
What had I done?!
The Golden Empire was in danger and it pained me to know that I had caused this ant war.
I wasn't sure which colony would end up winning, but I knew this definitely would end in massive
ant blood shed.
There was nothing I could do but watch in horror, as our beloved Golden Empire fought
against these newly introduced enemies!
May Gold Help the Golden Empire!
The next morning.
Everything was still.
I looked around the Hacienda Del Dorado.
There weren't very many workers in sight.
The war had ended.
Who won?
How many casualties were there.
With a heavy heart, I surveilled the Golden Empire's kingdom.
To my surprise, I could not find any dead ants anywhere.
What?
Where did all the ants go?
Last night the armies were fighting and I was sure I was going to have to deal with
piles of dead ants in the morning...
but no.
No dead ants.
I placed a dead cockroach inside to attempt to draw the ants out from wherever they were
hiding.
Suddenly, it was like a ray of hope!
In just a few short minutes, ants came rushing out from under the driftwood.
And what made me smile, was that the ants that came running out were our ants from the
Golden Empire still carrying their phoretic mites, as well as new, mite-free ants, assumingly
from the newly introduced ant colony from last night.
Wow!
The colonies had ultimately joined forces.
What could have happened?
Did they fight for awhile and then just decide, hey guys.
Let's settle our differences and just become one big happy family, how about it?
Whatever conspired overnight, I for one was relieved.
Can you imagine what was going through my mind overnight, thinking about how hard it
would have been to tell you guys the Golden Empire died because of a colony introduction,
the breaking of a basic ant keeping Golden Rule?
Anyway, so the Golden Empire now officially has 8 queens and a larger worker force now.
Also, there are many ants that are now mite-free.
Let's hope this greater worker force helps get rid of these phoretic mites once and for
all.
Another very cool thing I spotted in the Hacienda Del Dorado was this!
The bonzai trees were apparently carrying their own set of parasites!
But in this case, it excited me because these little insects were aphids!
It was my dream to find a way to properly and successfully house a colony of aphids
because as some of you may know, some species of ants love to tend aphids and other similar
plant insects and milk them of their sweet secretions called honeydew!
And yellow crazy ants are one of those species known to perform these aphid-tending behaviours!
Yes!
Can you imagine the Golden Empire farming their own sugar source all inside the Hacienda
Del Dorado?
So far, it seemed the Golden Empire wasn't tending them yet, but I think I did catch
what I thought were workers licking the leaves.
Perhaps one day the workers will discover that they can farm honeydew from the small
aphids feeding from the bonzai trees!
Isn't that cool, AC Fam?
I will be sure to keep you guys updated on this, and the overall progress of the Golden
Empire.
Thank you for watching another episode of the AntsCanada Ant Channel.
It's been quite the journey for this Golden Empire, and still the sauga continues on,
and we the AC Family will be here to support and watch over them every step of the way,
won't we?
Because, it's ant love forever.
Alright!
That was close.
right guys?!
So what do you think happened here?
Why would the two ant colonies be going to war in the beginning, and then decide to join
forces?
Let me know your take of this story in the comments section!
AC Inner Colony, I have placed a hidden cookie for you here if you would just like to watch
extended play footage of the ants in this video without all the commentary.
And of course, we have the AC Question of the Week.
Last week we asked:'
Why did this colony reject our first cockroach?
Congratulations to Hexagon 21!
who correctly answered:
They ignored the cockroach 'cause it was too big of a prey item.
Congratulations Hexagon 21 you just won a free ebook handbook from our shop!
For this week's AC Question of the Week we ask:
What is mite phoresis?
Leave your answer in the comments section and you could win a free tshirt from our shop!
Please subscribe to this channel so you don't miss a single episode.
We upload a brand new ant video every saturday at 8AM EST.
It's ant love forever!