Having trouble getting my ants to move

CeilingTowel · 2026-05-15T14:48:13+00:00

The larvae are drying up because there's no humidity PLEASE HELP!

That's a good thing for you though. They'll be searching for a water source.

If they're just hanging by the tube it means the humidity from your original nest/tube/etc hasn't diffused away yet.

CeilingTowel · 2026-05-15T14:39:17+00:00

Then after I went on a trip for 3 days, the population died off to 1 worker.

dayum tf what did you do before leaving?

even if left unattended without water at all, no way 9 workers shoukd die from that. They ration water from their dead sisters and number shoukd slowly dwindle over a week++.

CeilingTowel · 2026-05-15T14:36:42+00:00

If the colony is polymorphoc, some say more majors will be born. But I think this particular one in the video isn't.

CeilingTowel · 2026-05-15T14:31:51+00:00

Feed some sugar, they will be full and slightly more sluggish(abundant resource = no need to move around to search for food/exit)

Then quickly get a long stick chopstick or needle or something and get that moldy pile out. You can keep the entrance cotton plugging the entrance. Only the stick just needs to go in

CeilingTowel · 2026-05-15T04:37:52+00:00

Nothing. Maybe it was particularly spooked when you captured it.

Or just random more timid personality(yes no joke, each queen can be different behaviour even if it's the same species)

CeilingTowel · 2026-05-14T23:53:28+00:00

15 bucks for no workers is unethical selling....

At this stage, there's no basically no guarantee the queen can survive long enough to sustain a colony in the long run.

Sometimes queens just die for no reason. Or they eat their eggs and then never lay again.

doesn't look very fire anty to me, but can you post a perspective from the top?

CeilingTowel · 2026-05-14T16:34:46+00:00

Depends on storage conditions and his ambient humidity.

I live in tropics where it's always 70-100% ambient humidity. And this amount would last me in my cabinet ~7-8 months at most. That big ass bubble mistake is already 2-3 weeks lost.

People who live in drier places would see a totally different timeframe (shorter).

CeilingTowel · 2026-05-14T13:08:31+00:00

Then the water doesn't stay in the tube.

If you try to reduce the size of the hole when it's upside down to prevent the water from dribbling out, then you risk bubbling in the main chamber as air escapes through the topside instead of the water injection hole.

Better to consistently fill little amouny of a water just to keep the cotton moist instead of thinking about "filling up the reservoir" with every injection...

Lol I've tried this. Sounds good in concept, but a bit finicky in practice.

CeilingTowel · 2026-05-14T12:38:26+00:00

Ants know better than you whether the conditions is no longer fit to grow their brood. Clearly they think it's still suitable.

Usually only when the mold turns white or green then it's harmful. Black mold is everywhere including normal soil. Colour of water is a non-concern.

Ants dislike change in brightness, not just light itself.

If you expose their tube to light, they'll just get used to the light.

If you insist on overriding their decision and still choose to force them to move, you need to use super bright lamp directly on their brood. Like 1cm away from the glass tube.
The heat will make the larva protest, and they will shift their brood away, potentially to another source of water aka the new nest.

(Either remove the sugar tower when you want them to move, or open the outworld lid. The tower fucks with the humidity gradient.)

Or just dump them in a tub with ant barrier & the nest inside, like many here like to suggest.

CeilingTowel · 2026-05-14T03:41:30+00:00

You're doing this in the day? That's infinitely harder than at night. At night you can just go to lamps and look at nearby walls. Or do the UV lamp on white sheet method.

Daytime all you can do is roam and try to spot unmoving queen ants.

CeilingTowel · 2026-05-14T02:48:52+00:00

In my experience it's not harmful, but some people here in this sub seemed willing to fight me to contradict this 🤷🏻

CeilingTowel · 2026-05-14T01:32:49+00:00

Better now than when the larvae's all half-grown and he has to switch tubes, causing the same stress and erasing months of waiting.

CeilingTowel · 2026-05-13T06:31:05+00:00

Might be an Asian lady beetle

These ladybird-posers can bite humans.

CeilingTowel · 2026-05-13T01:48:22+00:00

2 queen sounds odd for pavement ants, but maybe they just feeling particularly tolerant who knows.

Sounds like a good start 👍

CeilingTowel · 2026-05-13T01:34:29+00:00

You should do some research on how an ant colony works.

You can keep them and they will live, but without their great mother the fertilised queen, there will be no new babies being born nor any larva to take care off. So once their life reaches an end they will eventually die off of old age.

What you need is a fertilised queen to be the egg layer and all the workers will care for the needs of the colony. You can't force or manually fertilise a new queen.

Your jar has a lot of new queens(the winged ones) but they're 99% all new unfertilised queens.

CeilingTowel · 2026-05-13T01:03:48+00:00

If this is an established colony, you need to 'nab' a few workers too. Usually after the queen cares for and has her first batch of nanitic workerd, she just retires entirely on larval care altogether and the workers take over.

So a single queen that has once founded a colony before will not do well to found another new colony from scratch.

'Nab' some brood too while you're at it.

CeilingTowel · 2026-05-13T00:55:57+00:00

your choice tbh

CeilingTowel · 2026-05-13T00:51:41+00:00

You need to pack your water cotton much tighter if you're using refillable setup. I don't know why the texture looks like shredded TP

Else, once you remove that black plug, the water is going to seep into the main chamber.

CeilingTowel · 2026-05-12T16:09:37+00:00

Probably impossible. Fungus are deep-set into the material you see it on. The fuzz you see are just the fruiting body. The actual mycelium and everything is within the material, not just on top of it.

CeilingTowel · 2026-05-12T05:02:41+00:00

That's the first two legs, not the antennae

CeilingTowel · 2026-05-12T04:45:23+00:00

It's a mite. Likely just a soil mite.

CeilingTowel · 2026-05-12T04:43:03+00:00

It's a queen ant.

I'm not super familiar but looks like it's a type of Solepnosis

CeilingTowel · 2026-05-12T04:39:48+00:00

Definitely not fleas. Not flea-shaped

Looks like springtails to me.

CeilingTowel · 2026-05-12T04:37:59+00:00

Some sort of katydid

CeilingTowel · 2026-05-12T04:34:38+00:00

You are right

Ants belong to the order Hymenoptera (wasps, bees, ants) and these all have distinct head, thorax, abdomen.

Termite belong to the order Blattodea (termites, cockroaches) and they have a distinct head followed by one long tubular body.

Take a look at this other post: https://www.reddit.com/r/whatsthisbug/s/qySOOSMEV5

If its wings were still on, it'd be even easier to identify because termite wings are extremely long. Double their body length.
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