Ant Farm Project - #01 - The Nest and Arena

Hello lovely Hiveans !

Today I want to show you some really cool things that my wife bought recently for her and our son as a new hobby and nature science experiment. He recently showed huge interest into observing and analyzing nature. This reaches from watching our new balcony spider, a really big cross spider that made herself comfortable withing our flower pots, up to things like smashing and closely examining fungi fruit bodies ^^ .. To foster his interest she decided to set up an ANT FARM and grow a ANT COLONY with him .. 🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜 😁

I really like the idea and will document the Ant Farm build and the evolution of the colony from now on here within Hive, in case any one of you is interested in an own farm. As I will learn a lot about this topic due in time, it would be a pleasure to answer all your question about the topic too. Just leave me comment in that case

The Gypsum Nest and Arena

For the beginning of the colony she bought a ready to go gypsum nest, as well as an arena. With time and colony grow she will make her own bigger nests and arena, and she already informed herself very well on materials and all the things that go along with an Do-It-Yourself approach, but for the start this should do the trick and suffice for the first year completely 😉

The Arena

The arena is an essential part of the colony. It is considered an imitation of the outside world. Here the ants will find food, water and are able to dispose of the accumulated trash over time. In the coming days they will prepare the arena so that it will suit the colony specific requirements, which are slightly different depending on the exact colony you want to have.

The Arena has the parameters 12 x 8 x 7 cm. The whole box is made from transparent plexiglass and thus quite robust. There are other alternatives, such as real glass, but as they plan it as a project for a little boy, the sturdy alternative is more suiting 😁

The Arena has a removable cover. This is important as you have to put food and water inside and also remove the trash from time to time. There are some bigger openings for fresh air, which are covered my a mesh net, so that the ants can flee. Regarding the break out of the ants there are other methods too, but I will explain them in time too. There are two holes at each side of the arena with a diameter of 1 cm. These can be either be plugged or connected via hose with other modules, such as the nest. We also have two liquid containers already with a volume of 3 ml. This is for fresh water, honey or sugar extracts or protein liquids for example.

The Gypsum Nest

As important the arena may be for a flourishing ant colony, the heart piece of the whole ant farm setup up will be the nest. There the ant queen will find here niche for laying eggs, workers will store food, such as corn and grains and find a safe refuge. Of course there will be no big threat for them in this setup that my wife and son are planing for them, but still it is necessary for the ants to feel comfortable. And they need to feel comfortable. Otherwise a colony will not grow at all, as they are very sensible to stress and comfort.

The nest is made from gypsum. There are alternatives such as sand, gel or acrylic too, but she decided on this material for several reasons. On one hand it is very sturdy and lasts forever. Also ant may bit pieces of from the walls in rare circumstances, the distance from the chambers to the nest outer rims is large enough so that they will never get trough ^^ .. In addition gypsum is not able to mold as sand could too, which would be very bad for the colony. Compared to gel and acrylic it also looks quite natural.🙃

The nest has the parameters 15 x 10 x 3 cm. It has a total of 8 chambers that can be used and thus has a size for approximately 200 ants. There are also two entry holes with a diameter of 1 cm on each side of the nest. In addition there is a whole in the middle into a chamber that is not connected to the others. This is for adding water to raise the moisture of the nest. Depending on the colony ants love a nest moisture up to 70% and through this chamber the whole gypsum can get some of it 😀

Thank You

I hope that you enjoyed my little presentation of our new ant farm equipment. This time I only showed you the arena and the gypsum nest, but these are essential modules in any ant farm, no matter if in one box, separated, from which material or which size. In the future posts I explain more about the preparation of the Arena, how the modules will be connected, which ant colony will move into the ant farm and also about the nutrition that they will receive. So if you are interested, give the ant farm post series a look from time to time and ask any questions that you may have. I will try my best to answer them either directly in the comments or in a separate posts if they are more extensive ^^

_{All pictures were taken by myself, ©@adalger, with a Samsung Mobile Phone}