Ant Farm
In March 2025 we aquired a Banded Sugar Ant Queen (Camponotus Consobrinus) and an ant farm kit and learned about the wonderful world of ants.
Ants go through metomorphosis from egg to larvae to pupae before emerging as adult ants. The cycle takes a few months from egg to adult.
Our queen arrived in a test tube with her brood of eggs and larvae.
Soon our queen had her first nanitic. Nanitics are the first worker ants reared by the queen. Once there are enough worker ants they take over looking after the eggs, larvae and pupae, and the queen's only job is to lay eggs, Larvae have mouths and need to be fed.
When our queen had about 12 workers they were ready to move into a new home. The workers are all female. The queen will only produce males, or drones, and new queens, when the nest is full and conditions are right. The new drones and queens have wings and fly off to mate. After mating the new queen loses her wings and starts a new colony. The males die shortly after mating. It is not great to be a male ant!
Students made a diorama and built the ant farm from a kit.
Ant anatomy. Ants have TWO stomaches, one for themselves and one to store food to later feed the queen, larvae and other workers.
On "moving day" we opened the test tube and connected it to the new ant farm,. We left it to the ants to decide when to move. They prefer a damp dark nesting area so we left the test tube in the light to encourage them to move.
We connected the test tube to the nest on a Friday. The queen moved during the weekend so we missed that. The last of the eggs and larvae were only moved by Wednesday.
This video clip shows a worker moving the larvae. The other workers seem to be exploring or just getting in the way!
Update September 2026. We now have 40 to 50 workers and our Banded Sugar Ant Colony is thriving.
They still sometimes use their original test tube (in the foreground covered with foil) as an extra nesting area