Envelopes have two major disadvantages: - Envelopes do not have tracking. For many people this is a huge no-go, especially with expensive ant species. If the envelope gets lost you're in trouble. - Envelopes are not treated carefully by the mail. I've worked for a mail service for two years and I te...

Generally: Express service.
And NEVER in envelopes like a few "special" ant sellers actually do.

Near my place (not just my garden but along the road) I have definitely seen: - Formica fusca (even seen flying queens) - Lasius niger (they're everywhere, when they fly you can see 3-4 queens per m² on the ground for several days) - Some sort of red-black Lasius, probably Lasius emerginatus - Some ...

Lasius niger has a reputation for being very stubborn when it comes to moving to a new tube and they are an ant species that can particularly well adapt to light, although the cotton may in fact still retain some moisture inside despite looking dry. What you could do is to attach a second test tube ...

10th January '17 Feeding time again! https://i.imgur.com/sXdhMlq.jpg This worker was actually trying to feed the dead one. https://i.imgur.com/ecW8dUY.jpg Yes, the picture way too bright but that major looks really cute. https://i.imgur.com/dSxM4pD.jpg Grasshoppers are still hot. https://i.imgur.co...

7th January '18 This is how it looks now every evening, lots of ants sitting at the entrance and a good number are foraging as well. https://i.imgur.com/maoQkW1.jpg They love baby roaches, unfortunately I ran out of them and you can't order the tiny ones. https://i.imgur.com/HXqmfpg.jpg Bee brood i...

29th December '17 Forgot to count 30 ants, edited above post... And while we're at it here's some more pictures! :) MEAT! https://i.imgur.com/MV57SOO.jpg They love it! https://i.imgur.com/Z4ch3BN.jpg https://i.imgur.com/bX0qz4k.jpg I'm not sure what exactly is going on but I have a suspicion... you...

28th December '17 Using the pictures from the 24th I made a COUNT. This is the nest. I gave every recognizable ant a blue dot, then divided the nest into small sectors and counted the ants in those sectors by giving them purple dot. https://i.imgur.com/sK6IUb2.jpg These two outworld pictures were t...

25th December '17 After noticing that they piled up garbage behind the water tube I drove the ants out of the outworld (which was kinda easy, I just hat to remove the towel to let daylight in which made all but a few brave workers hurried back into the nest) and properly cleaned the whole tank. Loo...

16th December '17 The food trials continue and I landed a real hit with cat food (pure meat, no plant crap like Cassia gum in it). They even chew on it after it became dry. Yesterday evening: https://i.imgur.com/neS3Xbs.jpg This morning: https://i.imgur.com/6qhWomi.jpg This evening: https://i.imgur...

11th December '17 My ants are meat ants! They love minced meat (even when it's dried out they still chew on it). https://i.imgur.com/0yRVoKh.jpg https://i.imgur.com/b6UPYKn.jpg The colony is fairly active and they eats a surprising amount of food considering they have so many pupae. The pupating is...

6th December '17 UPDATE! =) I tried to up their food diversity a bit. Since they won't even look at fruit with their gasters meat was the way to go. The burger beef was appreciated (which is kinda interesting cause the ingredients list said black pepper) although they mostly just licked it. The chi...

1st December '17 Usually I'd wait another 2 to 5 days for an update but there's actually stuff happening. They've brought a lot of brood into the new nest and there's a lot of pupating going on. In fact I think there's almost as many pupae in the new nest as in the old one. https://i.imgur.com/0W1U...

27th November '17 They're now kinda active even during the day (activity at night is much greater though). I made them a feeder full of diluted maple syrup but they don't seem interested however they do eat a lot of fish food (red mosquito larvae). https://i.imgur.com/1Q3lhYR.jpg One of the "m...

22nd November '17 Oh well, me stupid has just removed the pink cover foil I accidentally left on top of the glass all the time :whistle: and also added the second nest - the ants didn't like any of that. They brought all the brood (except those in the water tube) to the central part of the nest. Th...

22nd November '17 To add or not to add, that is the question... https://i.imgur.com/izjPDbP.jpg The new nest is prepared, the heating cable mounted, the water tube attached. I don't think they fill out the nest yet but I feel they are reaching the nest's limits in terms of brood storage. Also havin...

16th November '17 These pictures were originally not intended for release (I just wanted to see how the ants are doing), so they're not as good as usual. However I decided to post them anyway because, well, just look at them. I have no idea where all these ants are coming from. https://i.imgur.com/...

12th November '17 I cracked up the bee larvae while they were still frozen to share them with the Lasius niger (they can' eat a complete one) and the Camponotus seemed to like it, so this week I broke them all up. https://i.imgur.com/skQxmoJ.jpg Something is happening - there's new pupae (the white...

5th November '17 Lazy Tube is... still lazy. Their food intake isn't low but it's not spectacular either. They eat about two bee pupae every two days and some green bottle flies. The fruit flies were just ignored. https://i.imgur.com/qCGexOC.jpg Guard buddies! https://i.imgur.com/QsEMt4o.jpg There ...

29th October '17 Halloween special! Find the pumpkin ant! (revelation at the end of the post) https://i.imgur.com/ry8xRzT.jpg So I checked on the Amber Family (had to refill their feeder and give them some food) and to my surprise they were quite active outside. https://i.imgur.com/YnO7um1.jpg http...

28th October '17 Look who I caught on picture when I woke up last morning! She was NOT amused about the lights going on (in fact she looked surprisingly grumpy for an ant). https://i.imgur.com/BBCnUaV.jpg https://i.imgur.com/FraPcA3.jpg They are breeding and they are breeding a lot. It's kinda rare...

22nd October '17 Update time! I have updated the starter post, it now contains a proper care sheet for this species if someone want to raise them, too. Food item list got updated as well. Be sure to check it out. So, Lazy Tube has been surprisingly active over the last days, often there were 6+ ants...

17th October '17 Actually I wanted to make this update a bit earlier but my internet just completely screwed up... Lazy Tube got a new toy! It doesn't really fit in color-wise but you can't have everything I guess. It will help to increase the outworld's effective surface area a bit though which ha...

10th October '17 Actually I didn't plan on making an update today but well... Outside activity has been very low although today there were actually about 9 ants outside for a brief duration. Some workers have died over the course of the last week, the total count is now at 11 including the first de...

So... it's been a a while. 7th October '17 As you probably know I've expanded their setup with some tubing and a plastic container. It worked as planed and the ants are in fact disposing their dead there. https://i.imgur.com/Jy6LVbf.jpg After a while I've also added a small feeder to the plastic con...

Of course you can (and should) still feed them when they're still active.

I tried Dubias and my Campos didn't like them (the Lasius probably eat anything) but you might have more luck - I think I spoiled mine by feeding them so much bee brood.

You can relocate them to a larger tube (30x200mm worked well for my C. barbaricus) - just wrap a piece of paper around the large tube, then stick the smaller tube into the large tube. They should walk straight into the darkened larger tube (they really don't like light). Once they all left the small...

Camponotus barbaricus can be active into December, I checked the temps in Andalusia and it's getting cold there at early to mid December (cold means 15°C during the day and 5-10°C during the night, remember that's close to Gibraltar which is almost northern Africa). You can keep the C. barbaricus at...

You can come to reddit r/antkeeping, I'm a mod there and we could need content as we're currently in the process of building up a community. There's also quick question topic. https://dm.reddit.com/r/antkeeping/ (that's the dark mode visuals, you can scroll down for the normal white theme) There's a...

Oh, forgot to update this again... Um, yes they did - sort of. They are mediteranean ants which means they don't really hibernate - they are just far less active than usual (basically they sit in the nest all day and night, the brood doesn't develop, etc.). They never look kinda dead like northern C...