Today I surprised my unsuspecting fire ant colony with a new ant farm and their reaction
was hilarious!
This is the Phoenix Empire, my 4 month old fire ant colony that we’ve watched grow
on this channel from just a single queen fire ant.
You, the viewers, have helped me make decisions for them via home voting, including choosing
and naming every structural segment of their setup, the City of Ashes.
Now guys, last week you all voted for a new nest extension to their continually expanding
territories, and today we get to see the fire ants we love, react to the new piece of real
estate you guys chose.
Will they love it, or will they hate it?
Time to find out!
Welcome to the AntsCanada ant channel!
Please SUBSCRIBE to the channel and hit the BELL icon!
Welcome to the AC Family.
Enjoy!
I think giving our fire ants their new home and watching their full reaction was the first
time these ants really gave me a belly laugh, which has been so needed.
I think you guys will find it quite funny, too, so do keep on watching until the end.
Our ants are just so cute, guys!
Ok so, I was about to give the fire ants their new home when suddenly, peeking into Hell’s
Kitchen, the colony’s hunting and feeding grounds, I spotted the fire ants doing this!
Have a look!
That’s quite the busy ant trail!
Where does it lead?
This massive dead Madagascar hissing cockroach.
It came from my roach farm, from which every morning, I pick out deceased roaches that
have died overnight from old age, to feed to the Phoenix Empire.
And here they were feasting eagerly on this massive carcass of meat.
Yes, guys, our fire ants are now big enough to handle daily servings of adult hissing
cockroaches.
Can you believe it?
Here’s another sign that the colony is exploding in population now.
They’re starting to get smarter, and are looking for weaknesses in our setup in hopes
to escape.
They’ve also been drinking a tonne of sugar water and freshwater, sure signs of the current
explosive population size of the colony now.
Oh, boy!
I remember when my last fire ant colony reached this stage, and guys, I believe things will
get more and more intense caring for these fire ants from here on in!
So as you can see, it’s very timely that we’ll be adding a new living area for the
Phoenix Empire today, as they’re growing like crazy now, and aren’t the same budding
colony we knew just a few weeks ago.
We even saw them creating a makeshift nest in a random wood hollow in Hell’s Kitchen
in last week’s episode, which means their current nest in the Fire Fortress is no longer
enough living space!
So, let’s give the ants the new space they need right now!
Here we go!
AC Family, behold the City of Ashes, the full royal territories of the Phoenix Empire, which
is about to get bigger.
Now before adding the new nest space, the first thing I needed to do was determine the
best place to attach the nest.
For those of you at home who plan on keeping ants, where you attach new nests makes all
the difference in the world.
It’s time for some Urban Ant Planning!
Now last week we saw the ants moving out their brood through this tube and into a hole here
in the driftwood in Hell’s Kitchen.
So for me, the best place to attach this new nest was here, because the ants were already
moving brood through this tube.
Attaching the new nest to the other tube on the other side would not be an ideal spot
because the ants currently leave the nest through this tube to enter the Test Tube portal
which takes them to either their sugar water source or Hell’s Kitchen to eat, so adding
a nest here probably wouldn’t be as great a spot as this other tube where ants carrying
brood are already passing.
The chances of the ants coming up with the great idea to turn the new home we give them
into their new satellite nest are greater if we attach it here.
And so guys, behold the Phoenix Empire’s new nest, which you all voted for last week
to give the colony!
An AC Hybrid Nest Mini from AntsCanada.com.
It’s a great choice of nest for an ant colony, and I love that we can actually see everything
within it.
I’m pretty excited to see how the fire ants would like it.
I’ve used Elmer’s school glue to glue the glass down onto the nest.
What’s cool about this ant farm is that part of the floor area has these microholes
for humidity, something an ant nest must have.
But before we introduce this ant farm to the ants there’s one quick thing we need to
do.
I had to fill up the hydration chamber at the bottom with hydration medium, and today
I’ll be using moist coco fibre which I find works really well, as it doesn’t mold easily
and is very water absorbent.
Once the coco fibre was all in, all was set!
And now for the part we’ve all been waiting for.
Time to attach the nest to the City of Ashes.
Now here was the tricky part.
Cutting this busy tube slash ant highway at just the right time to minimize escapes was
for sure gunna be a challenge.
Here we go, guys!
Wish me luck!
Cutting the tube, and blocking both open ends with cotton as quickly as possible.
Done!
Ants coming from the outworld expecting to get home, some with mandibles full of roach
meat, hit the sudden dead end and had no choice but to make a u-turn to take the other longer
route home.
Ants from the other side, coming from the nest hoping to get into Hell’s Kitchen also
were perplexed by the sudden dead end!
Thank goodness there were only a couple escaped ants, which I scooped up with a cotton ball
and tapped into Hell’s Kitchen to reunite with the colony.
Alright and now the next step was to quickly remove this cotton stopper and attach the
tube to the Hybrid Nest.
Here we go!
Removing the cotton and quickly attaching the nest.
Now you would expect a tonne of ants to come rushing in right away, but nope.
None!
It took a few seconds before one ant finally appeared to explore.
You’ll see in a bit why there weren’t many ants coming in from this end.
But meanwhile, let’s attach the other tube.
Lots of ants here!
Alright, and in they go.
Now several ants were seen entering the nest right away, eagerly exploring this cool new
space, unlike the other side, where a select few ants came in but quickly made u-turns
back the other way.
And AC Family, here’s why that is!
Ants coming in from the nest are in “exploratory mode”.
Remember they’re leaving the nest to enter Hell’s Kitchen where they’re expecting
to look for food, while on the other end, ants are in “returning home” mode, and
are simply expecting to follow the pheromonal trail left by previous ants which direct the
ants to where home actually is.
Pheromones laid on the ground are kinda like the ants’ Waze app, and help direct ants
where to go.
So as you can imagine their ant Waze told them to go into the tube in order to get home,
but suddenly once they reached the fresh Hybrid Nest, devoid of any pheromones, it was like
Waze had told them they were in the wrong spot and so they made hard u-turns back the
other way in search of the pheromone trail that leads home.
We were confusing the ants big time, and watching the ant confusion of it all made me laugh.
We were totally messing up their system by doing this.
But don’t worry, all it will takes is ants coming in from this exploratory end meeting
up with ants from the other end hoping to get home, for the ants to reestablish a new
pheromone trail.
Eventually, this successful route to and from home will be reinforced with pheromones and
the ants will begin trailing again through here, but this definitely takes some time
to occur.
The two parties of ants kinda need to meet each other by accident a few times for them
to catch on.
There were definitely times I was cheering them on, frustrated for the two parties to
meet!
The ants coming in from Hell’s kitchen kept u-turning, and ants coming in from the nest
were busy exploring!
Meanwhile, I noticed ants had resolved to take the long way back home.
Haha!
Poor ants!
Here’s a quick time lapse to watch the ants slowly learn that passing through the Hybrid
Nest actually leads home, via the reinforcement of the ants’ pheromonal trail.
Finally!
Yay!
And now that I knew the ants had found each other and were establishing a new pheromonal
trail, I covered up the nest and resolved to come back in an hour to check up on them.
Lifting the lid an hour later, I saw this!
Wow!
Not only was there a clear trail of ants now, but the ants had started to bring in grains
of sand from Hell’s Kitchen!
This was great news as it meant the ants have begun to customize the living space to make
it more ‘homey’.
The ants have officially made the Hybrid Nest, Phoenix Empire territory.
I think it wouldn’t be long before the ants call this home.
A few days later, I peeked into the nest, and this is what I saw.
OK, so they haven’t moved in yet, but they’ve further customized the interior of the Hybrid
Nest to make it their own.
Even if they haven’t moved in here yet, I knew it was only a matter of time before
they would.
Many ants like fire ants, despite having a love for digging, will also be opportunistic
in nesting behaviour, and will happily occupy a cavity of ideal living space, as we saw
when the ants decided to move into that driftwood hole last week.
But, it’s a smart move to not move into a new space right away, particularly one that
they hadn’t excavated and made themselves.
Imagine if the ants quickly mobilized and started moving in the brood and the queen
to a new cavity, which also happened to be the home of some ant-eating frog or other
predator?
That would be disastrous and a lethal move for the colony.
Most ants need to make sure a space is safe, grow familiar with it, and customize it perfectly
before they decide to make the move, and I believe that is what is going on here.
I’ll be sure to continue filming our Phoenix Empire over the next few days and update you
as soon as they move in.
Something tells me it’ll be within the week.
I wanna thank you guys for always being there to support these ants, and raising them together
with me.
I appreciate you all for being there every step of the way.
I’ll see you all again next week for another episode of the AntsCanada ant channel.
It’s ant love forever!
AC Family, did you enjoy today’s episode?
There’s lots ahead for our ants and other creatures in our Antiverse, so if you haven’t
yet, do SMASH that SUBSCRIBE button and BELL ICON now, and hit ALL so you get notified
at every upload.
Also don’t forget to hit the LIKE button every single time including now.
It would really mean a lot to me, guys.
Thank you!
AC Inner Colony, I have left a hidden cookie for you here, if you would like to watch some
extended play footage of the ants reacting to their new Hybrid Nest Mini ant farm.
And guys, did you know that it’s anting season in the Northern Hemisphere, and you
don’t even need to leave your home to start an ant colony?!
You can catch pregnant queen ants from the safety of your own backyard, balcony, or open
window starting this month!
Be sure to visit AntsCanada.com for all your ant keeping and collecting gear shipped to
you in a special package from our ant-loving facility in the USA, so you can get the most
out of your ant keeping experience.
We ship worldwide and also offer full email support if you need our help!
Visit AntsCanada.com today.
And now it’s time for the AC Question of the Week.
Last week, we asked:
How did we know our basil plants were truly benefiting from the presence of our springtails
and soil creatures?
Congratulations to E Azizy who answered:
The basil sprouts are taller than those in the garden.
Congratulations E Azizy, you just won a free Ultimate Ant Keeping handbook from our shop!
In this week’s AC Question of the Week we ask:
What were one of the several signs that the Phoenix Empire was exploding greatly in population?
Leave your answer in the comments section and you could also win a free ebook handbook
from our shop!
Hope you could subscribe to the channel as we upload every Saturday at 8AM EST.
Please remember to LIKE, COMMENT, SHARE, and SUBSCRIBE if you enjoyed this video, to help
us keep making more.
It’s ant love forever!