Colony of Messor barbarus (suitable for beginners)

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.

You will receive the ants inside a test tube with food and water for two weeks. They were born inside the test tube and they are well there.

Difficulty of breeding: EASY

The colony is formed by the queen and 5-15 workers (its children).

Instructions about the breeding of Messor barbarus (seed-eater ant):

Colonies of this species are one of the easiest to maintain, due to its seeds-based diet. They collect seeds and so they have enough food stored for months. You have to be careful because sometimes the seeds could germinate, so if you slightly chop them, you can be sure they will not germinate, specially when the colony is still young and there are not many workers.

Once you have received the ant colony, the first thing to do is to feed it if possible (water with sugar and derivatives). If there are too many ants, the best thing to do is to put them directly into the nest.

To feed the ants inside the test tube you can use a syringe. Insert the syringe needle through the cotton plug and put a droplet. This droplet must not be large because the ants could drown. Once they have drunk, remove the excess. A cotton bud can be used to clean, but be careful when you remove the plug because the ants can escape.

You can keep the ants in the test tube used for transportation as long as there is water inside. If you keep them inside the tube you must feed them at least twice a week.

To put the ants in the ant nest there are two methods:

- Pour out the contents into the nest, tapping to drop the ants off the tube.

- Place the tube, without the plug, in the ant nest or in the foraging area and wait the ants to relocate by themselves. This may require a lot of patience (days or weeks).

General details:

The most appropriate feeding is a diet based seeds (bird seed, millet, oats, etc), bread, superfine noodles and some newly dead insect (flies, crickets, silverfish, mealworms, etc). This diet has a high protein content.

They can also eat sugary food such as protein syrup (anthouse.es), pasta, sugar, honey, etc, to obtain carbohydrates.

It is VERY IMPORTANT that there is always WATER available, especially in summer. You can use water troughs, water gel (anthouse.es), the ants can drink directly from the humidity system (sand), from liquid food they take, etc.

Sizes:

• Queen:   14-16.5 mm
• Workers: 3-13 mm