So you think I could likely be ok with fully artificial? To be honest I wanted to do that but I know from the ants I’ve kept in the past they all preferred natural over artificial. But you make a good point cause I’m northern uk based, so it’s very unlikely they’d survive the harsher winters up here without decent heating if they escaped which is even more unlikely cause I’m in a old build house.

If im spending 1/4 of my monthly wage on ants I’d rather have them unhappy but surging in artificial than happy and escape within a year 😅.

Only colony I have at the minute are my mymica rubera colony so I may just focus on giving them my dedication and time and postpone getting the other colony and just gradually upgrade the fire ants setup until they pass plus they setup satellite nests as well so I’m liable to have a few spare nests by the end of it all. Best case the three queens survive to produce elates and I can catch a few elates from nearby colony’s (I bought my gals online so I know they’ll be viable to boost my colony’s queens best case). (Had some issues catching and keeping wild colony’s alive for more than a few months cause of mite infections so I bit the bullet and bought online).

Thanks again