Greetings AC Family,

Oh no! Another one of my ant colonies have gone missing in their setup. This week I venture deep into the St. Lucian Rain Forest to seek answers to my ant keeping problems. By trekking through the Caribbean jungle and exploring the ants and other creatures there, I acquire insight that helps me become a better ant keeper and creator of worlds.

AntsCanada vs. Mother Nature

OMG guys, I have an important update on the Black Dragons, aka our young Polyrhachis colony on El Dragon Island. Don’t panic, but apparently, they’ve disappeared!

Dear Mother Nature, the Great Mater natura, I’ve come to you to seek answers, to find help. Yet another of my ant colonies has gone missing. I’ve been ant keeping for decades, documenting it on YouTube for the past 8 years, but it wasn’t until I came to the tropics that I’ve faced a slew of problems. For the most part, I’ve been able to find solutions to the crises you’ve thrown my way, but every now and then, you pull a fast one on me, which no prior human research could have saved me from, and I’m left mystified. How can I master your rules? What am I missing? What is my missing piece? Will I find it here, halfway across the world, in this Caribbean rainforest? Now I’m in your enclosure, your massive terrarium, to find out how to be a better creator of worlds, a better ant keeper. Please SUBSCRIBE to my channel, and hit the bell icon. Welcome to the AC Family. Enjoy!

It’s 7 AM and raining on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, in the Atlantic Ocean just northwest of Barbados. It’s the rainy season now here in the Caribbean, and I was scheduled for a trek through the rainforest to explore what ants were inhabiting the island. But this week, I learned from my housekeeper, who takes great care of the ants and creatures of my ant room in Manila while I am on excursions like this, that one of my young ant colonies, the Black Dragons—my Polyrhachis semiinermis colony of about 50 workers or so—have disappeared. I’ve done everything in my power to provide them with the resources and space they needed to grow into a fruitful ant colony. What killed me was that I wouldn’t be able to get home until two weeks from now to check on what happened. So, this trip into the heart of the Caribbean jungle was also one of soul-searching for me.

The island of St. Lucia possesses a topography and ecology of stunning beauty, which some say is matched by no other location in the Caribbean. And one of its greatest natural wonders is its enormous National Rainforest. As soon as I stepped in, I found myself surrounded by the most intense tropical vegetation I’ve seen in a long time. I saw wild pineapples growing from spiny plants in the ground. On my channel, I’m always raving about bromeliads, and it just so happens pineapples are also bromeliads. It was amazing to see such a familiar fruit growing wild in its natural habitat.

It was then that a movement caught my eye in the leaf litter. It was an ant. Wow! It was an incredible ant! I knew this ant belonged to the genus Camponotus, a carpenter ant of some kind, but it was a species I’d never seen before. She was so gorgeous, with her ruby red body and shiny golden gaster. She crawled through the leaf litter like a shiny piece of natural jewelry, and I knew I had to follow it. I had to see its nest. Could you imagine a whole kingdom of these shiny ruby and gold ants? I figured it might take all day to follow it home, but I had all the time and determination in the world. I suddenly felt like a treasure-seeking pirate of the Caribbean. The ant took me down a rather beautiful pathway covered in the most vibrant green moss. It was like a natural carpet—fuzzy and soft to the touch, and just so satisfying to look at. Looking closer, I saw some tiny ants foraging around, again species unknown. The moss covered even the plants. As you can see here, moss covered this huge bamboo stalk. The bamboo was not dead; it was living but allowed itself to be covered in this natural carpet. Man, if only I could get my moss to grow this thick and abundant! Now where did our ant go? Hmmm… There’s our ant. I continued to follow her.

As I walked through the rainforest, I came across a variety of birds and tree anoles. These very cute lizards reminded me of my very first foray into the world of exotic animals. My very first lizard was an anole at the age of 11, and it began my entire fascination with vivariums. I would have never imagined that today, decades later, I’d still be creating vivariums—but on a much larger scale, and with millions watching at that. Hehe. And then I spotted a trail of ants and the entrance to a nest hole in the soil. Wow! Check out those supermajors, AC Family. These were likely a species of Pheidole ants, also known as big-headed ants. The sight of the supermajors was incredible! It did seem like workers were rushing out of their hole in a fuss. How strange… Following their trail, I discovered why.

The ants were bringing back a dead millipede, and a fly attracted to the smell of the carcass hung around—perhaps hoping to get a piece of it, or lay its eggs onto it. But the ants clutched on to their prize with determination. As I watched the ants carry their meal home, it made me wonder how many insects or prey items like this millipede these ants brought back to the nest daily. It had to be a lot, and the variety of insects collected must have been mind-blowing too!

I continued to follow the ruby and gold ant through the lush terrain. It seemed like the route back home was quite complex, but I knew that if I kept following her, eventually, she would head back to her nest. The ant took me through an entanglement of vines, tree branches, plants, and across rotting logs adorned with mushrooms. Mother Nature was truly an artist. Such beauty. I could never match this degree of aesthetics in a terrarium.

At that moment, surrounded by the interconnected web of life in this rainforest, I understood something profound. The crises I face in my ant room—the deaths, the struggles, the infections—they are not failures. They are lessons. Mother Nature is teaching me balance, resilience, and the interconnectedness of all living things. I realized my role as an ant keeper is not to master nature but to be its student. And with this realization, I felt ready to return home and face whatever awaited me in the Antiverse.

Alright, AC Family, it was a different video this week. I must say, it was incredible walking through the rainforest here in St. Lucia, but it was also quite an introspective one. Next week, I will be in Toronto, Canada, before heading back to Manila, and I hope to go looking for ants there—just like old times. Be sure to hit that SUBSCRIBE button and bell icon now so you don’t miss out on queen hunting next week, and on what has happened to the Black Dragons. And hit the LIKE button every single time, including now.

If you’re new to the channel and want to catch up on all your AntsCanada lore, I’ve put together a complete storyline playlist so you can watch how all the ant colonies you love on this channel came to be—all their challenges and hardships, all their successes and life events. Their entire storylines can now be watched from the very start, so you can better appreciate the journey these ants, as well as us watching them, have been embarking on. It’s incredible how epic the lives of ants are!

Also, just a quick reminder to all those wanting to get into ant keeping, we offer a ton of easy-to-use ant keeping gear and pro ant farms at our shop at AntsCanada.com. We ship worldwide and offer full email customer support if you need it.

AC Inner Colony, I’ve left a hidden cookie for you here, if you’d like to watch extended play footage of the ruby and gold Camponotus ants. If I lived in St. Lucia, you better believe I’d be keeping them—try to anyway!

Before we continue with the AC Question of the Week, I would like to plug my daily vlogging channel. I post daily vlogs of my travels around the world, which often include a lot of nature-related content. The vlogs are now following my trip here in St. Lucia, which is truly a tropical paradise. Feel free to watch the vlog and subscribe while you’re there!

And now, it’s time for the AC Question of the Week.

Last week, we asked:

Why were these shrimp ideal candidates as new additions to our river world?

Congratulations to Beta Gaming, who correctly answered:

The glass shrimp were good to add because they clean up the habitat and are a living food source for the fish.

Congratulations, Beta Gaming! You just won a free e-book handbook from our shop.

This week’s AC Question of the Week is:

What was your favorite creature spotted in this rainforest, and why?

Leave your answer in the comments section, and you could also win a free e-book handbook from our shop.

I hope you can subscribe to the channel as we upload every Saturday at 8AM EST.

Please remember to LIKE, COMMENT, SHARE, and SUBSCRIBE if you enjoyed this video to help us keep making more.

It’s ant love forever!