Greetings, AC Family!
One of the most common questions I get asked is how does one get into ant keeping?
How do you start?
Where do I get the ants for an ant farm?
Well, the answer to that is simple.
You start in your own backyard or neighbourhood.
In my case, I started right in the area where I grew up, near the Humber River in Toronto,
Canada.
And today, I've come back home, from halfway across the world, to show you how to locate
the seeds of an ant farm.
Today, AC Family, as I've done for years growing up, we hunt for queen ants!
Please SUBSCRIBE to my channel, and hit the bell icon.
Welcome to the AC Family!
Enjoy!
Everyone has that one place that holds memories of their childhood, that one special location
we call home and love coming back to.
Well, mine is right here, at my family's home in the suburbs of Toronto.
It's where I started ant keeping and the place my entire journey as AntsCanada began.
It was here where I housed my very first ant colonies, where I started this Youtube channel,
where I began making ant farms & ant keeping products to sell online, and where my ant
love truly began.
A lot of people have asked why this channel is called AntsCanada when I continually mention
my home base and Antiverse being in Manila, Philippines, and well, now you know why.
I moved to Manila in 2011 for one of my other career pursuits.
But AC Family, today, now that I'm in Toronto, I wanted to take you through the fun and exciting
process of how I find queen ants, because I know a lot of you are from geographically
similar areas, and want to start ant keeping yourselves, so this video will cover what
I do to find queen ants to start an ant farm every Spring and Summer in temperate North
America.
To begin the hunt, you need the proper hunting equipment.
Some snap cap vials.
You can buy these in most dollar stores or arts and crafts shops.
Any small bottle or container will do, but I love these because I can easily poke breathing
holes at the tops so the queens can breathe, and can easily fit into any pocket.
Later you will also need some test tubes like these to place the queen ants in for incubation,
but please excuse these used dirty test tubes.
They're long overdue for a cleaning and I never got around to cleaning them since I
left 7 yrs ago!
But now AC Family, it's off to the hunting grounds!
I find the best time to look for queen ants is right before noon around 11AM to early
afternoons before 3PM.
Different species have their nuptial flights at different times of the day, but I have
always found most of my queen ants within the 11am-3pm time period.
Also, looking on the right day is key!
A sunny day after a rainstorm is the most ideal time to go hunting for queen ants, because
this is when most ants have their nuptial flights.
It had just rained the day before so I was confident we'd find something!
By the way, if you're new to the world of ants, here's a quick crash course on ant reproduction.
During a period of a few days each year, every species has their designated week or so that
they have what are called Nuptial Flights where young queens and males who are born
with wings, known as alates, fly en masse and mate in the air.
The males die after this nuptial flight and queens fall to the ground, break off their
wings, and embark on a search for a location underground to start their own ant colonies.
It is during this period after mating when newly impregnated queens are searching for
a nesting location, that we ant keepers have to snag them for our ant farms.
It is truly like catching a real life Pokemon, and it requires a mixture of skill, knowledge,
a good eye, and a bit of luck.
And now AC Family, welcome to my ancestral queen ant hunting grounds.
I love coming here!
The Humber River trail is a popular bike path on the west side of Toronto, offering bike
riders, joggers, and walkers an easy, yet long route alongside a steady-flowing river
and deciduous forest.
The river is home to a variety of fish and aquatic creatures and attracts a vast array
of birds, animals, and of course insects, including ants!
I love searching along paths like this because it forces creatures to come out into the open,
in plain sight as they move towards and away from the River.
I find it perfect for spotting wandering, freshly mated queen ants!
Walking along the path now, the first thing I notice are not queen ants, but rather tonnes
and tonnes of caterpillars!
It's officially caterpillar season.
Moths have laid their eggs, and from them have hatched caterpillars which spin massive
cottony webs in the trees.
These caterpillar web nests formed when the caterpillars were babies but are abandoned
now.
The caterpillars' droppings are the only evidence left behind of their previous inhabitation.
AC Family, isn't it just amazing to think that not only spiders spin webs, but so do
caterpillars!
Look at these caterpillars hanging from their web life lines.
Sometimes caterpillars will fall out of their trees or even jump out to evade a predator
like a bird, but will hang from their lifeline webs like these, making them seem like they
are floating vertically in mid air.
I had to watch out not to run into these hanging caterpillars while walking along the path
on my search for queen ants.
The caterpillars are voracious herbivores, eating up leaves like crazy!
When they've completely eaten up the leaves of one tree or bush, they will emmigrate to
another, and with it being caterpillar season, it seems this Humber River Trail path is a
busy caterpillar crossing.
Sadly, crossing this great path happens to be a life-threatening risk for the caterpillars
and other creatures crossing, for it is the path through which giants stampede and ride.
Some who are lucky enough make it across to the other side.
But as for the unlucky others, the path is littered in their flattened carcasses.
But, these flattened corpses are feasts for certain creatures inhabiting the area, including
ants.
Is this huge ant a queen?
No, she's just a big supermajor worker carpenter ant.
Componotus pensylvanicus.
She's found a squashed ground beetle.
Sadly, this cool and giant species of ant had their nuptial flights last month in Toronto,
and is no longer flying, but I always love watching them!
Various other Camponotus species continue to fly in North America and Europe until around
September.
Camponotus species, also known as carpenter ants, make great pet ants because they are
so large so they and their brood are easy to see with the naked eye, and are quite active.
The only draw back I see with carpenter ants is their colonies usually take two or three
years to reach an impressive size.
Patience is truly required when housing these girls.
If you go back to some of my first videos on this channel, I had an amazing colony of
Camponotus novaeboracensis, the New York carpenter ant, still one of my favourite ant colonies
to date.
I had to release them back into the wild when I moved to Manila 7 yrs ago, but I often wonder
how they've been holding up today.
They must be a massive ant colony by now!
I truly hope to find a Camponotus novaeboracensis.
Let's see.
Walking along the path, I also ran into my very first species of ant I've ever kept on
this channel.
AC Family, behold.
Myrmica ants.
Here I caught them tending some plant aphids, like ant "cows", which they ferociously protect
and milk for their sweet secretions called honeydew.
These extremely aggressive ants, though a different genus from the popular true fire
ants of the genus Solenopsis, have adapted the name fire ants because of their stings.
To be honest, I've been stung by these Myrmica ants many times while keeping them, and honestly
in my opinion their bites are much more painful than those of the Fire Nation, my tropical
fire ants, at home!
Now if you want to keep a colony of Myrmica, here is a hack, AC Family!
I find the best way, is to collect a mature colony, as opposed to catching a single queen
ant, and I'll explain why in a bit.
The good news is, their nests are almost always shallow, usually under some wood, leaves,
or rock, so scooping them up is easy.
Also, another awesome advantage is, if you scoop as much of the colony as possible you
are bound to scoop up one queen or twenty!
You see Myrmica ants are polygynous meaning their colonies usually contain dozens if not
hundreds of egg-laying queens.
After their nuptial flights, the newly impregnated queen ants of this species band together,
founding big colonies cooperatively, so unlike most ants where collecting an established
colony from the wild almost always leaves you without a queen ant because the workers
hide her well, collecting the majority of the ants of a Myrmica nest almost always guarantees
the capture of a queen.
They also hunt during the colony founding stage, which makes it a bit more complicated
for the average beginner ant keeper, so catching an already established Myrmica colony may
be easier than collecting a bunch of queen ants and placing them in a test tube.
But if you're going to go collecting Myrmica ants, remember to wear gloves!
Trust me.
Stings from these girls are no joke!
It hurts a lot!
If you go back to the oldest videos of this channel, you can follow my journey with my
first Myrmica ant colony.
They're such an interesting species that love wet nests and lots of insects and sweets!
If you love watching collective ant aggression, these are the ants for you.
Alright, AC Family, I know what you're thinking, all this talk but still no queen ants!
I know!
It's strange, but hey, sometimes this happens.
Some days are dry and queen ants scarce.
I resolved to come back and try another day.
Day 2 of queen ant hunting, again after a great rainstorm, and I was hopeful to find
something.
It wasn't long before I spotted something along the path that I was sure was a queen
ant, but AC Family, as I took a closer look, this is what I saw.
Do you see it?
Do you guys know what this is?
This looks like a queen ant, with its enlargened thorax, but actually, this is not an ant at
all.
It's not even an insect.
This is a spider.
It's an ant mimic!
This is actually the first time I've seen one here in Toronto, as I usually see them
in more tropical climates.
What looks like the head of the queen ant is actually the spider's chelicerae, its mouth
parts.
There are over 300 species of spiders in different families that mimic ants.
Looking like an ant is advantageous because most predators know that ants taste gross
and/or are aggressive, so a predator like a toad for instance, might see this spider,
believe it's an ant, and decide it isn't worth eating.
This type of mimicry where a creature mimics a harmful or undesirable animal is called
Batesian mimicry.
Thanks to Batesian mimicry and ants' notorious reputation in this entire forest kingdom,
this spider is more likely to outlive the average ordinary-looking spider.
I continued to look and search.
No queens were in sight.
In fact, I searched on two more days and though there were lots and lots of caterpillars,
there was no sign of a queen ant anywhere!
This can be a common frustration in ant keeping.
Sometimes, like I did last year, you can catch many, and sometimes you come up empty handed,
but it's a matter of persistence and not giving up.
Sadly, by the time you watch this, I will be on my 16 hr flight back to Manila, Philippines
and regretfully, queenless.
But you know what, AC Family?
Even if I wasn't lucky, many of you AC Family members from around the world have been!
Behold, your epic queen ant catches!
Here is my Camponotus colony, just got my first soldier, plenty of eggs, got some pupae
in there still...
Hello, my name is Guy Cougar and I've caught five Tetramorium sp E and I live in Salt Lake
City...
These are all my ant queens.
These three are called Pheidole.
This one however is called Iridomyrmex...
This is my queen Solenopsis xyloni and I'm really excited for her first group of workers...
Two photos of the second queen.
I believe they are the same species...
This is my fire ant queen, scientifically known as Solenopsis geminata...
Hello, just caught my first queen ant today.
Don't know the name of the species...
The eggs are maturing...
I caught this queen about two weeks ago.
Anyways, bye!
It's ant love forever.
Alright AC Family, did you enjoy this week's video?
I hope it helps some of you out there looking for queen ants of your own this year.
In last year's queen ant hunting video, I was much more lucky.
Feel free to watch it here!
If you were like me and haven't found a queen ant yet, trust me on this, you have nothing
to worry about!
There is still lots of time, as the ants will continue to have nuptial flights all summer
long well into Fall.
Good luck and keep looking!
I guarantee you will surely find the queen ant of your dreams, and when you do treasure
and care for her with all your heart!
AC Family, on my flight back home I will not be able to stop thinking about the Black Dragons
and their disappearance two weeks ago while I have been away.
I will finally be able to get to the bottom of it!
So be sure to hit that SUBSCRIBE button and bell icon now so you don't miss out on the
update, and hit the LIKE button every single time, including now.
Also, if you're new to the channel and want to catch up on all your AntsCanada Lore, I've
put together a complete story line playlist so you can watch how all of the ant colonies
you love on this channel, came to be, all their challenges and hardships, all their
successes and life events, their entire story lines can now be watched from the very start
so you can better appreciate the journey these ants, as well as us watching them, have been
embarking on.
It's incredible how epic the lives of ants are!
Also, just a quick reminder to all those wanting to get into ant keeping, we offer a tonne
of cutting edge, easy-to-use ant keeping gear and pro ant farms at our shop at AntsCanada.com
for when you do catch your queen ants this year.
We ship worldwide, and offer full email customer support if you need it.
AC Inner Colony, I have left a hidden cookie for you here, if you would just like to watch
extended play footage of the creatures seen along this nature trail.
Before we continue with the AC Question of the Week, I would like to plug my daily vlogging
channel, daily vlogs of my travels around the world which often includes a lot of nature
stuff.
Feel free to watch and subscribe while you're there!
And now it's time for the AC Question of the Week.
Last week we asked:
What was your favourite creature spotted in this rainforest and why?
Congratulations to El Reino De Las Hormigas who answered:
My favourite creature of this video was "Odontomachus", because
they remind me of the Jawbreakers.
Congratulations El Reino De Las Hormigas you just won a free e-book handbook from our shop.
In this week's AC Question of the Week, we ask:
Why is a path like that in this video a great location to find queen ants?
Leave your answer in the comments section and you could also win a free e-book handbook
from our shop.
Hope you can subscribe to the channel as we upload every Saturday at 8AM EST.
Please remember to LIKE, COMMENT, SHARE, & SUBSCRIBE if you enjoyed this video to help us keep
making more.
It's ant love forever!