Happy New Year everybody. I do hope you all had a great Christmas.
Nothing to report on my ant colony today as they are hibernating. So I thought I’d just give a word of encouragement to those who have tried to keep any colonies in the past without success.
I often get emails from would-be ant keepers who are trying to raise a colony of their own for the first time. It is not uncommon for these to fail, and it’s not always down to the individual ant keeper. It is not always as easy as one would think.
Sometimes new ant colonies fail, especially when starting off with a lone newly-mated queen, because the queen herself simply does not successfully raise her first brood. Perhaps there is something wrong with the queen. Perhaps her first brood were unviable and she has to start over, which really can by physically stressful for the queen. During the raising of her first brood she lives solely on her body reserves, and so having to go through this all twice can have a detrimental affect on her.
Yes, sometimes it is down to the inexperience of the ant keeper, but this is not as bad as it may seem. It’s all a great experience and one from which you can learn from your mistakes and improve on your next attempt.
I have one particular new ant keeper, James S who has attempted on several occasions to raise an ant colony from a single queen, and his first few attempts provide fruitless. From what I could understand he was doing everything right, but for some reason he could not get the queen past her first brood. But James kept persevering, and I believe he has started again with a “ready-made” colony, i.e., one that came with a queen and a number of workers. I am hoping this one will be a success for him. I have to say I am very impressed with his determination.
I have been keeping ants for many many years. My first attempt to raise a colony of Lasius niger from a newly-mated queen was when I was 13-years-old (about 500 years ago – or so it seems!) That ended in disaster. I tried again when I purchased my first house in my late twenties and similarly that ended in failure. But each time I failed I learnt from my mistakes and tried again.
Then I had my first great success on raising a colony from a lone queen. She went into produce the biggest and most successful colony I have eve had. In fact, after a few years the colony outgrew a four foot fish tank and I had to transplant them into my garden. That colony lives for more than 20 years.
I still have failures every now and then, despite having had over 40 years of experience in raising ants. I just put it down to experience.
So, my advice to anybody who has tried to raise an ant colony but have not succeeded is to try and try again. Oner day it will happen, and it’s a wonderful thing to witness.