I’ve been caring for a colony of weaver ants over the past 3 months, which I started
from just a single pregnant queen ant. 3 months ago, I filmed and watched her lay her first
batch of eggs, which she raised into larvae, feeding them from her own liquified muscle
tissues, until they pupated and emerged into fully fledged weaver ant workers.
We finally moved them into a lush rainforest terrarium with lots of leaves for them to
create their iconic leaf basket nests.
I was totally elated because this species was known to be difficult to raise in captivity,
and I had thought we were well on the road to successfully rearing a fully mature weaver
ant colony.
However, I had to travel to the US for a couple weeks, and a caretaker who usually ant-sits
my ant colonies whenever I’m away, continued to give our weaver ant colony the love and
care they needed to continue on their trajectory of colony growth.
But something happened.
The day before flying home, I received a text from my caretaker saying the queen ant and
colony had suddenly disappeared from the bottle they were nesting in.
I was actually excited about this news because in my mind, it meant that the weaver ants
had finally moved out of their founding bottle and into the trees where they had created
a leaf nest!
I couldn’t wait to see it.
But when I returned home, what I found was something totally not what I expected at all.
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Guys, you won’t believe all the things that happened this week.
It’s been long and stressful, and the news I’m about to share with you is both good
and bad, with a surprise twist ending.
For those of you who’ve been closely following the journey of our weaver ant colony, we’ve
named the Jade Empire, you guys know how much these weaver ants mean to me.
I’ll be needing your help making a very important and ultimate decision so stay tuned
for all that coming up.
So let’s start from the beginning, guys.
As some of you may have heard from my live stream last week where I gave you guys an
updated tour of my new upgraded Ant Room 2.0 at the new Ant House which I’ve officially
moved into (go check that video out after watching this video), I just got back from
the US, Orlando, Florida to be exact, for an event called AnimalCon USA, where I was
lucky enough to meet a tonne of you AC Family in person, some of you who even flew in from
other States and countries, to chat about ants.
I loved seeing all the ant love and felt so much gratitude in my heart.
I also met a lot of other very popular creators there!
Shout out to Brian Barczyk for inviting me and my friend Tarantula Kat for the recommendation!
It was such good feelings all around, and I left totally inspired, eager to get back
home to my ant colonies and other pets.
So when I got that text from my ant caretaker that the queen weaver ant and workers had
evacuated their birth bottle, I was already anticipating to share with you guys the great
news of our Jade Empire’s new leaf nest.
What a milestone!
I was eager to film the weaver ant workers carrying their larvae to glue the leaves together,
and just document their new life in the trees, but when I got home, this is what went down.
I approached the terrarium.
Indeed the bottle was empty.
The plants looked healthy and well established, too.
It was time to begin the search for their leaf nest.
What I needed to find was a grouping of leaves folded in on themselves and sealed with white
webbing.
I checked the larger tree first.
Nope, no leaf nests there.
They must have nested in the second tree.
I checked the second tree.
This one had more foliage so for sure they had to be here.
But to my surprise, I couldn’t find a leaf nest.
No workers rushing out to defend against the disturbance of my hands.
No sign of the Jade Empire.
That’s odd.
I double checked, triple checked, and quadruple checked.
The Jade Empire was nowhere to be seen.
My heart began to drop to my stomach.
I checked the Syngonium ground plants for evidence of the Jade Empire.
Again, nothing.
Suddenly, the thought of our Jade Empire gone made me feel ill.
They couldn’t possibly have dug into the soil.
Weaver ants are arboreal and don’t do that.
After examining the terrarium for a while, there was only one other place the Jade Empire
could have disappeared to.
At the center of the terrarium was a large piece of driftwood, and there were many caverns,
holes, and crannies that I feel the Jade Empire could have possibly disappeared into.
Could they have possibly moved into there?
I decided to leave out their sugar test tube and keep a look out for foraging weaver ant
workers over the next few days.
I knew the Jade Empire had a big appetite seeing as the colony was growing so quickly
at the time I left with about 18 worker ants and lots of brood.
But each day, no matter how many times I looked in, I could see no workers in sight.
The prospect that our Jade Empire was truly gone, made me feel extremely sad.
By day 5 and no workers in sight, I finally decided that the Jade Empire was probably
truly gone.
But how did this happen?
The worst case scenario that I could think of was that while I was away, a colony of
wild pharaoh ants broke into their setup, perhaps attracted to the smell of crushed
roaches which I’ve been feeding them, and probably wiped out the Jade Empire in the
process.
It doesn’t take pharaoh ants very long to decimate a colony, especially a small one
like the Jade Empire, queen, workers, brood and all.
This could be why there wasn’t any evidence of dead weaver ant remains anywhere.
Pharaoh ants have destroyed colonies of mine before, and indeed I do see them around the
Ant House.
Or perhaps the ants truly had died out for some unknown reason in the two weeks that
I was away and were somewhere decayed in the soil, eaten up by soil creatures?
I don’t know.
But, guys, I’m so sorry, AC Family to be a bearer of sad news.
I believe the Jade Empire has died, and I felt like such a failure.
I know most people might find it weird that someone might cry over insects like ants,
but I cried.
I was really counting on them to be a dream weaver ant colony at our new Ant House.
But guys, as sad as all of this is, the story didn’t end here.
What I spotted the next day was almost like an answer from the Ant Universe to my weaver
ant woes.
The week I returned from the US, I was scheduled to landscape my home aviary.
It’s a massive three story enclosure that I’ve been building over the past 4 yrs at
the center of the Ant House to house my flock of pet birds.
By the way, I do have a new channel about this Giant Home Aviary and the animals that
will be residing within it, which you can find and subscribe to here.
No videos yet but I see it already has thousands of subscribers.
Thank you!
The first video will be uploading soon.
But the plan was to decorate the aviary with tropical plants and trees.
It was a bold and ambitious side project of mine, and was kind of like building a terrarium
on a macro scale.
One of the trees that was moved into the aviary on landscaping day was an African talisay
tree, and AC Family, you won’t believe it, but in the branches I was shocked to find,
yup!
You got it!
Weaver Ant Nests!
I needed to cut these weaver ant nests out of the tree because they might harm my birds.
I did so and placed them into this container.
There were just so many ants!
I for sure had also collected the queen because I had collected all the weaver ant nests in
the tree.
The Universe had given us a relatively young weaver ant nest!
Oh man!
Now here’s where I need your help, AC Family.
What should we do with this weaver ant colony?
There were two options:
We could keep this colony.
Maybe move them into the terrarium?
The only downside to this is, if the Jade Empire is indeed alive somewhere in the terrarium,
the ants would surely go to war and simply due to sheer numbers, this new weaver ant
colony would win, or We should wait to see if the Jade Empire still
shows up and just release this weaver ant colony into a nearby tree to help the weaver
ant population at the Ant House property further flourish.
Doing so would be great at supporting native ants in the area, and weakening invasive ant
populations, like pharaoh ants.
AC Family, do let me know what you guys think we should do in the comments.
I have some important decisions to make and I probably need to make that decision asap
because this container is an unsuitable home for this weaver ant colony.
Overall, this past week was quite a rollercoaster ride of emotions for me, and it was sad that
the Jade Empire, whom we cared for and loved, and watched grow from just a starting queen
might have died.
I did for a moment feel like I had failed as an ant keeper, but after thinking about
it for awhile, I realized that things like this are all part of the ant keeping hobby.
One of the biggest questions I got at AnimalCon from AC Family members in attendance was why
it seemed that a lot of test-tubed starting ant colonies were dying or didn’t make it
somewhere along the way.
And it made me realize that this channel with all of our various successful ant colonies
we’ve had in the past, might make it seem like ant keeping is so easy!
I never thought to realize that for newcomers to the ant keeping hobby who might have been
introduced to ant keeping through my videos, might be under the impression that ant keeping
success rate is high, it’s a fast and easy process most of the time, and rearing a massive
ant colony is like growing a puppy into an adult dog.
But in reality, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
Often times, ant keeping is not easy.
I’ve had many failures on this channel, lost colonies, and failed queens.
Fact is, many newly pregnant queen ants don’t make it in the wild, let alone in captivity.
Many of the more exotic or uncommon ant species, which may be awesome to look at, are also
some of the most notoriously hard to keep in captivity for some reason, weaver ants
included, and we ant keepers still don’t have a solid understanding as to why.
Perhaps the captive diets that we feed our ants aren’t sufficient for some of the more
specialized ant species.
I notice weaver ants always nest in trees containing mealybugs, as you can see here.
They drink the honeydew these mealy bugs excrete.
Maybe the honeydew contains some essential micronutrients that the weaver ants need that
a sugar water test tubesimply can’t provide.
Perhaps feeding gut-loaded roaches isn’t enough to sustain a growing weaver ant colony,
and they need the nutrients acquired from eating a wide variety of insects which they
can only get in the wild.
Perhaps some species of ants are just not meant to be kept in captivity, simply because
it’s hard to truly duplicate what they get out in nature.
But despite all this, in this hobby, I find the key is to just keep trying.
My colony of spiny ants for instance are the perfect example.
I’ve been trying for years to get a spiny ant colony going, and after very many failed
attempts, I finally succeeded with our colony we’ve named the Blades of Midas!
Look at them now, guys!
They’ve grown so big now and are just about ready for a larger terrarium!
That will be exciting!
They’re doing so well, and had I given up on keeping spiny ants, I would have never
gotten to this point where I can now enjoy my dream spiny ant colony!
And so, I wanted to stress that this disappearance of the Jade Empire is a harsh but common reality
in this hobby we call ant keeping, and a reminder that in keeping ants as pets, like keeping
any kind of wildlife, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.
Regarding whatever course of action, we decide on for this weaver ant colony, as usual, I’ll
try to do my very best.
That’s truly the most we can do as people, learning about the world around us.
I was reminded today that failure is all part of the success process.
Thank you for watching and supporting the ants.
It’s ant love forever.