Queen of Formica cinerea (with eggs)

It is essential to have prior knowledge before having ants. We particularly recommend the book  Criar Hormigas de Raul Martinez. (click here)

Caution: We ship ONLY 1 COLONY or queen and ONLY 1 SPECIES per order or ant's nest, so you must choose correctly the one you want. We do not charge for the ants. They are FREE. You only have to pay for the shipping costs.

Difficulty of breeding: MEDIUM

Instructions about the breeding of Queen of Formica cinerea

Queen arrives in a test tube with its first eggs. Once you have it at home, it is important to add a micro drop of water with sugar or honey, very diluted to prevent drowning. You can also use basic compounds, proteins or vitamins, in order to make easier the  recovering from the trip and get a good set of eggs.

They need about 30 days to go from egg to ant. Everything depends on the temperature. You should try to keep it at 25-30°C.

When the first workers (nurses) are born they are not quite complete ants, their development has been accelerated by the queen. They do not have the size of a normal worker. They are also more fragile to disease and they have a shorter life. It is a critical moment because the queen does not have strength to raise another generation of ants. If they die, the queen die too. Therefore, we must be extremely careful. We should not miss humidity or food, but we should not go too far with this last because leftovers can become rotten and fungus and diseases can arise.

Once the queen has her nurses and you see that they can not be fed inside the tube without risk of escape will be the right time to move them to a new ants nest.

Size:

• Queen:   10-0.8 mm