Red Harvester ants, always die within a few days

[Vendayn]

Any tips on keeping them? I've heard of many people saying this is an easy ant to keep. I try workers first to see how they do before getting a queen but they don't even live a week and die within 3-4 days. I notice they live in the sun mostly so I keep a glass jar, dirt from right where they live, seeds from where they live and keep them in the sun for part of the day. They never dig, never get any of the seeds and stay on top until they are dead.

I have done research on Red Harvester ants (which are common in Southern California...will sort of, mostly Argentine ants or Fire ants now) but I can't seem to keep them alive for more then a month. Any tips on caring for this species? I did give the dirt moisture once or twice but that didn't help.

Thanks

[Jenny]

Wood bought a Red Pogo Queen, she dug in and later he found her dead as well

Perhaps they just get too stressed in captivity; your glass jar might have just been too hot, as anything is hotter under glass than out in the open.

It is difficult to find the answers and maybe you never will

[Vendayn]

I did try leaving them in the shade. When I did leave them in the sun part of the dirt was covered in the shade.

Must not be good captive ants I assume unless we are doing something wrong.

[Wood~Ant]

Several people who have tried keeping Pogonomyrmex (red harvester ant species), including myself, have found they are a difficult ant to keep in captivity.
These ants do very well in the wild and in gardens in the USA, but when kept by other ant keepers, the colonies sadly seem to fail very quickly.

It may be that the humidity and/or temperature control is wrong in an artificial nest; whereas it is controlled by the ants themselves in a wild nest.
I wish I knew the answer

[Formicalondon]

This site may help www.notesfromunderground.org/archive/vol101/methods/pogonomyrmex.html

Where did you get a Red Pogo Queen from wood ?

[Wood~Ant]

formicalondon said:

Where did you get a Red Pogo Queen from wood ?

I bought my Pogo and Honey Pot Queens from MartinG, who is a member of this forum. He lives in Essex and can get many species from other countries from time to time, which are reasonably priced

[B-Rabbit]

Hope I am allowed to post here and not just a wood only section.
Ven,
I have kept Pogonomyrmex over the last few years, yes I agree, one of the harder ant's to raise in captivity. I found I have NEVER had a success when I placed these queens in a soil environment. Probably because they just can't dick enough. I do know that several Pogonomryex sp. forage for food while brood are being reared. So, since P. occidentalis is like that, I nearly always give my queens a night in a large contrainer with a moist cotton ball and a drop of syrup. This lets them eat a good fill before starting a colony. Then when the first eggs are laid, I continusly feed her small insects. I had one queen with such an appatite she would eat a fly a day. When she didn't get enough food she ate her eggs. Which is why these are pacticularly hard to raise.
I've managed to get several queens to larvae/pupae stage. Most of the time they die after that because I can't maintain a high enough humidity level until I replace the tube (which is hard because I have like 50 tubes and hundreds of queens every year). One way I found is to take a local nest of pogo's on a warm day and dig into the nest a little bit and you can usually find callow workers and pupae. Put some LIGHT COLORED callows in with the queen and pupae. I did this and I have a perfectly healthy Pogo colony in hibernation. Don't be afraid of the callow's hurting the queen. This is not the case. I actually tried to put a callow P. occidentalis in with a T. caespitum queen and the T. caespitum queen was much more powerful than the callow.
Keys to rember:
-plenty of moisture, they will do a lot better.
-Supplament her with insects to help raise brood.
-boosting is good!
-Be patient.

Hopefully this helped a bit.

[Wood~Ant]

captain said:

Hope I am allowed to post here and not just a wood only section.

No problem Everyone is more than welcome to chip in and give their little bit of helpful input