Moving Ants

[IceWhyte]

Hello Everyone,

Has anyone got any good tips on how to encourage the Barbarus to move out of the test tube? I have placed it near to the entrance of the Ytong structure and put a little bit of food down there. I expected that the queen and the rest of the colony would be put off by the light but in actual fact it doesn't bother them at all. I put the heat lamp on today and they were climbing to the top end of the test tube for more heat rather than seeking shade!

Thanks

[Wood~Ant]

Often the problem with a plaster or aerated concrete (Ytong) nest is that they get very cool, so in order to make the ants want to move into the nest set up you need to make it warmer than the test tube they are currently living in, if you see what I mean

My advice is to make the nest warm and dark, and the tube cold and an unpleasant place for the colony to live. Sometimes a gentle tap with the fingers will make ants want to move, or if push comes to shove I have even tipped up the tube to encourage the ants to move out, but this is always a last resort when everything else fails.

Certain ant keepers say leave them alone as the ants know best what they like, but this isn't much use when you see them getting overcrowded in a test tube and you have a nice home all prepared for them to move into.
If your colony is good and healthy it will accept a bit of stress without coming to any harm, but you really need to make them move into your Ytong nest with the least hassle if you can do so, as then they will settle down quickly and feel at home

[TenebrousNova]

I got mine to move into a soil set up by using a screwdriver to make a small tunnel right in front of the test tube. The queen found this during her explorations and started digging further in, eventually moving her brood and workers inside.

The trick is usually to make conditions in the new nest more favorable than the current one. I believe that Wood has it all covered in his post.

[IceWhyte]

Cheers for that. I put the heat matt on to warm up the bottom for them and put the heat lamp on at the top near to test tube and they more or less packed up their eggs and went down the hole and have been there since. The queen was acting strange before it moved though, it was coming out of the test tube and picking up stones and placing them inside the test tube. Almost as soon as all the ants had moved down below, a couple workers started foraging and taking seeds down to the new nest. ;D

[IceWhyte]

Oh, meant to ask, now that they have moved out of the test tube, I have created a water reservoir like what we talked about before but how will I get water to the queen? I am aware that ants transport food/liquid in their stomach but I read somewhere that the Barbarus don't do this.

[Wood~Ant]

I would just spray a few drops of water on a certain area, as I have found Messor barbs prefer to have a lot of dry areas and only a small part of the nest really damp. From what I heard from the way these ants live out in Spain, they tend to nest in clay type soils which bake dry on top from the hot sun, and stay a bit cooler and moister the lower down the nest goes.

They keep their granaries in drier parts of the nest, and the queen and brood in the damper parts. So a few drops of water should soak far enough into the aerated concrete to provide them with enough moisture I reckon

[IceWhyte]

Thanks for that. I think I will need to try something different because they are nesting right at the bottom of the concrete. So making that part of the nest wet could be tricky.