Q&A for How to Build an Ant Farm

You need to wait for the colonies to start budding—this is when there are multiple queens ready to take flight for mating. The newly mated queens are those bigger ants that are wingless and are running around busy trying to find a place to start a new nest. Queens can be caught gently with your fingers or with the feather forceps.

Reduce feeding amounts until they stop making more ants, the ants will still be "born" but if you stop feeding them as much/reduce the temperature by, say, 5ºC they will stop growing as much.

The inner jar is filed with air and serves the purpose of maintaining a narrow area for the ants to build their tunnels. This ensures you will be able to see the tunnels. Without the small jar, the ants would tunnel deep into the main jar and you would not be able to see their tunnels.

It depends on the colony size. Feed them a couple insects every two days, if they don't eat all of it, remove it.

You would just he hurting them. You should really look for them in their nuptial flight periods.

A plastic container would work fine, as long as there's enough space for them and they receive enough air through small holes in the lid or container.

They may get stuck. Consider mixing the honey with some water to make it more liquid-like instead.

A queen alone is enough to start a colony. However, it may take a month for the first workers to mature. Whether the workers would kill the queen depends on species, but usually queens from alien nests are killed.

Find a jar, put some holes in the lid, boil some dirt in water, and then wrap a cloth around the jar to the top level of the dirt. Put the jar in an area that has a nice, stable temperature and some sunlight. Put in the queen inside the jar. Feed her sugar water, and she will go dig into the soil.

Queens can live up to 30 years; it all depends on the amount of food, space, species and temperature. Space can be as big as you want.

Most professional ant keepers create a mixture of baby powder and a bit of rubbing alcohol. Mix it to a paste-like consistency and smudge it on the side of the jar. The alcohol will evaporate quickly and the powder will be left on the jar. The way this works is when an ant climbs on it, the powder will fall off, along with the ant. You need to replace this every few weeks.

No, ant farm do not need a queen for the most part. If you want to have a long-lasting colony however, you may want to add a queen ant.

You have to catch a queen ant for an ant farm. Normal (worker) ants do not have the ability to reproduce. Only a queen ant can lay eggs.

Keep them in separate terrariums so they don't fight.

You can find them yourself or buy them online You can find ants during nuptial flight times, usually around July in the Northern Hemisphere.

They will die if they are flooded. Moisten some cotton balls and put them in your ant farm or put water in a test tube and plug it with a cotton ball.

No. What you need is a queen. Keep her in a test tube with water at the end, then a piece of cotton wool, then a space of air with the queen in it, then a piece of cotton wool sealing the tube. More than one queen is advisable, as the queen may die, not be fertilized or not lay. Or she might eat the eggs, that happens too. You don't need workers though.

No, they will often grab it and hold it, then dissect it and carry it away or eat it.

You can throw a few ants into the jar before filling it with dirt. Observe if they are able to escape--the glass may be too slippery for them to crawl out. If they can escape, you can put a lead on your jar with a few small holes poked in it. Make sure the holes aren't big enough for ants to squeeze through!

That means that they are ready to fly off and find new nests. Don't worry, only the queens and males do this, and your current queen won't.

Most of the time, you will be able to find her at the bottom of the anthill. The reason is that the queen is close to an escape tunnel and also, so that the queen ant does not overheat.

Most species do not do that unless very stressed. If you are unsure if your queen is dead, give it a day to see if she's alive.

You need something stronger than plastic wrap to seal your ant farm lid. Try to find a hard plastic lid that fits snugly so they can't escape.

Most species will eat almost anything you give them, but some species are very picky and will only eat specific foods. It all depends on the species.

The ants probably won't tunnel near the edge of the ten gallon. And no, most ant colonies don't last much longer than a month or two (especially ones you buy online).

You can tell an ant is a queen very easily. If you see an ant in a colony that's noticeably bigger than the workers around it, it is a queen.

With a queen it could last for 15 years, but without one it may only last for a few months.

You can use anything in place of the inner jar, so long as it fulfills the purpose of keeping the tunnels against the outer jar, and so that the ants can’t chew through it.

Yes, but they only last a few months or even weeks. You will need a pregnant queen to have a real long lasting colony, since she is the only reproducing female.

No you can't, ants that aren't from the same colony will fight and kill each other, so if you want multiple species, you will need multiple colonies.