Greetings Ant Lovers,

It’s nuptial flight season again and the queen ants are everywhere. At this time of the year, virgin queen ants mate with males, and ant keepers like myself seek out these newly mated queen ants to raise full ant colonies from. This year’s find is extra special for several reasons. We’re on the brink of ant scientific discovery! Hope you enjoy this week’s informative ant episode! Ant love forever!

Why Scientists Want to Study These Queen Ants From My Yard

So we’re beginning to hit the rainy season now where I live, and thus a multitude of ant species are starting to have their nuptial flights in droves.

Now, if you’ve been following the channel for a while, you may recall a very special ant species that we found in my backyard a few years back—

a cute red and black ant species with little spines, light-colored fuzz, and adorable heart-shaped gasters.

These ants were of particular scientific significance because we actually were the very first in the world to discover that they existed in my country.

We were mind-blown that we had made a novel scientific discovery in the world of myrmecology, and initially called the ant species 555 since it was the 555th ant species to be geographically documented in my country.

We also dreamed that one day we would find a queen of species 555 and attempt to keep it.

Well, AC Family, you won’t believe this, but as I was walking through my yard this afternoon, I happened to find this beauty.

AC Family, I’m proud to present our newest queen ant:

Species 555.

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Enjoy.

Isn’t she stunning?

So this footage was of our new queen ant, species 555, last week.

And I have lots of incredible info to share about her species in this video.

But you guys will love what she looks like today!

And as usual, I have another huge surprise reveal at the end of the video, so do stay tuned for all that coming up.

So, as mentioned earlier, a couple of years back we discovered this cute ant species in my yard and found out—after sending a sample worker to my ant taxonomist friend and myrmecologist (i.e., a biologist who studies and documents ant species in my country), whose name is Dr. David General—that these ants had never been documented before in my country.

At first, we had to identify if the ant was actually a brand new ant species because it looked nothing like anything that had been seen in my country before, but later discovered that it was an already discovered species, not an unknown species, called Meranoplus bicolor.

But stay tuned, because there’s an interesting twist to this story.

Anyway, it was still awesome that we on the channel were the first in the world to discover that Meranoplus bicolor existed in my country—and to think, we only spotted them in my very backyard!

It was total validation, in my mind, of what I’ve been saying time and time again on this channel:

that we ant keepers and hobbyists of the world are important to science, specifically myrmecology, because the world doesn’t have nearly enough myrmecologists to study and sample all the ants of the world.

And we hobbyists are unique in that we specialize in growing and culturing ant colonies in captivity—something that famous myrmecologist Dr. Corrie Moreau has found useful in her work, as she told Nat Geo that her and her team find it hard to keep ant colonies they are studying alive in the lab.

Scientists focus their work on the biology aspect in studying ants, while we ant keepers study husbandry—like what their favorite foods are and what their ideal nest conditions are.

Dr. Corrie Moreau has stated how important it is that scientists collaborate with hobbyist ant keepers like us, which is why it was ultimately awesome that we actually had a queen Meranoplus bicolor now in our possession.

What we learn about how these colonies start up, what they like to eat, and how they build their nests will be valuable to science.

Oh, just so fun—she’s just so precious!

AC Family, as you watch this video, do think of a name for her and leave your name suggestions in the comments so we can all vote for her official name in a future video.

All right, so right off the bat I noticed a few things here.

First, she’s got the signature white fuzz that we see in the workers of her species and a similar bumpy head.

However, one thing I do notice about her body that is different from the workers is the lack of spines on her thorax.

The workers have prominent spines, while she seems to have a more round thorax.

Interesting.

Now, when I first put her into this tube, I didn’t actually know whether or not she was fertilized—meaning, whether or not she had successfully mated with at least one male.

When I caught her during her nuptial flight last week, I crossed my fingers and hoped she did and would start laying eggs.

I decided to place her in the dark and check up on her one week later.

And AC Family, this was what I spotted when I looked into her test tube after one week:

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Yay!

Cradled delicately within her mandibles, our queen Meranoplus bicolor stood perfectly still, holding her very first baby.

Now, if you know ants, you know that this egg could still be unfertilized.

The true test will be to see if this egg actually does turn into a worker ant.

And if it does, then it means we have a future Meranoplus bicolor colony in the making. Let’s hope so!

Now a few of you guys had a very excellent question that I’d like to answer now.

Some of you asked:

“Okay, so if this species was newly documented in your country, can’t that mean it’s an invasive species (i.e., introduced from another country and potentially hazardous to the ecosystem)?”

The answer to that is no.

I’ve asked Dr. General about this.

In fact, he said that since Meranoplus bicolor is known to be native to many surrounding countries in my region of the world, that the most likely story is that Meranoplus bicolor had already existed in my country since the beginning.

And it took us humans a while to find them—which happened to be two years ago, in my yard.

The problem is there aren’t enough myrmecologists, as I said before, to study all the ants.

And Dr. Corrie Moreau says we’ve only barely scratched the surface to learn all there is about ants.

But bottom line is, our queen here is a native ant species.

So they’re good for the ecosystem of my area.

A notorious example of a truly nasty and invasive ant species are these guys:

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Black Crazy Ants.

As you may have seen in our last video, a black crazy ant colony had broken into my ant room from the outside and have been such a nuisance.

They moved into the bottom of one of my ant farms on AC Ant Tower, and I managed to trap the colony where they were setting up camp.

I’ve recently begun to try to get them to move out and into a legit AntsCanada setup—luring them out with food and moisture—because I want to try keeping them.

And a lot of you guys also said we should try keeping them.

Now these Black Crazy Ants are so invasive and have conquered nearly all tropical and subtropical countries of the world via human activities like shipment of cargo, plants, and such.

They displace, outcompete, and even kill native ant species.

We actually don’t know which country these ants originally came from, but we suspect it was probably India.

The colonies get massive and can even perform a type of cloning which allows virgin queens to mate with their biological brothers within the nest—without it being inbreeding.

A weird genetic hack, which means if we keep this colony in an enclosed setup, the colony could technically live, breed, perpetuate, and grow forever—so long as they keep getting food, water, and space.

Crazy species and highly successful invaders.

Another highly invasive species are, of course, fire ants—originally South American natives, but now worldwide pests and agricultural crises in various parts of the world.

I have a ton of them in my backyard and I’m trying to get rid of them by supporting the populations of native ants in my area—like this queen we have here.

My dream is to raise this Meranoplus colony, and then when they have their nuptial flight, release the alates to further populate my area.

All really exciting stuff for ant keepers like myself.

Now, some more great news: this is what I saw in our Meranoplus queen’s test tube just this morning—

Yay! Looks like she’s got a small batch of eggs going on now.

Guys, I have a hunch that she’s been fertilized.

What do you guys say?

All right, I’ll put her away in the dark to raise her potential colony in peace and be sure to keep you all updated on her progress over time.

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Okay guys, now although we didn’t actually discover a new undiscovered species when we first spotted these cute Meranoplus bicolor ants, there was an ant that I sent to Dr. Dave General that might shock you.

AC Family, I’ve been keeping a secret from you.

Over the past few weeks, I managed to capture another queen ant and have been raising another ant colony.

Have a look at them.

This here is a Crematogaster species—

Miss events, that, like Meranoplus, are known for their heart-shaped gasters.

Some call them Acrobat Ants because of how they can walk with their gasters held curled over their heads.

Look at how energetic they are!

Super cute ants.

But aside from their cuteness, the ants within this test tube happen to also be huge for myrmecology because—get this—after sending a sample of these ants (who, by the way, were also captured in my backyard) to Dr. General, he first confirmed that it looked like nothing that had been documented in my country.

It was thrilling to know that we may have made another geographical ant documentation.

I waited to hear more.

Later, he confirmed that it also looked nothing like any ant documented in our area of the world.

What?!

Now guys, get this—he’s now looking through all the records throughout Borneo, and then later, all the ant species documented in all of Asia, then the world, in order to confirm that indeed—get this—this is, in fact, a brand new undiscovered species.

Isn’t that crazy?!

The ants you guys see here in our test tube might be an unnamed and undiscovered ant species of Crematogaster.

That blows my mind!

And you better believe I’m going to do my very best to raise this colony to maturity because these ants would also be extremely valuable to science—if we can get them to maturity.

Now, this is actually my second attempt at trying to raise this species.

The first time I tried was last year, but that colony started to do well before suddenly going off feed and dying out mysteriously.

I think it may have been missing something critical in their diet.

But I’m determined to try again with these guys.

And wow—look at this, guys!

You can even see eggs in the queen’s gaster!

I’ve never seen that before in all my years of ant keeping.

Isn’t that just amazing?

Now, let me know what we should name this ant colony.

Dr. General says it will take a long time—possibly years—to determine if they indeed are a brand new ant species.

But I’m willing to be patient.

I’m also too shy to ask him if we would be able to actually give the species a scientific name—if they indeed are a new species—or would Dr. General be the one to name the species, since he’s the one doing all the work at confirming their species ID and he is the pro taxonomist.

Any scientists out there know the rule or etiquette in the naming process of a new species?

Whatever the case, AC Family—these are indeed exciting times, wouldn’t you say?

If you would like to try your hand at ant keeping, now is actually the perfect time to start because it’s officially nuptial flight season in the Northern Hemisphere.

And a ton of you are writing to me saying how you’ve been catching queen ants, which is awesome!

So if you’d like to get into the hobby, be sure to visit AntsCanada.com so you’re completely ready with your ant farm starter kit and equipment that you see me using in my videos.

In case you do find a queen ant in your yard, here are some of the many queen ants I’ve already found this year.

It’s a super fun, educational, and fulfilling hobby for all ages, and I’d love you guys to join me in keeping pet ants.

We ship worldwide from our facility in the USA and also have a useful ant keeping handbook to give you helpful tips to grow your ant colony into a booming ant army.

Visit AntsCanada.com today.

It’s Ant Love Forever.

All right—now speaking of a booming ant army, it’s time for my big surprise reveal.

Our resident fire ant colony—the Crimson Knights—are finally entering their booming stage!

Their population has soared into the thousands, eating multiple insects a day now.

And I feel they’re just about ready to be moved into a more permanent home before they get too big and become harder to move.

Now, in the past, we’ve housed mature fire ant colonies in acrylic ant farms, rainforest river setups, and—my favorite—an Avatar-themed floating mountain paludarium.

Now I’ve been working at creating our fire ants’ next home, mulling over some ideas and considering home concepts I’ve never before tried.

Our next fire ant setup, AC Family, needed to be huge.

So guys, after a long period of drawing up plans and looking over your suggestions for fire ant housing in the comments of previous videos, I’ve come up with the perfect idea.

I think you guys will truly love the absolutely gigantic home that will utterly dwarf even our Leviathan Terrarium that I have planned for our Crimson Knights—

which I will be ready to debut in next week’s video.

Do subscribe to this channel to see it, but AC Family—let’s just say,

our fire ants will be moving into a truly explosive setup.

Oh yeah!

I hope you can subscribe to the channel, as we upload every Saturday at 8 AM Eastern Standard Time.

Please remember to like, comment, share, and subscribe if you enjoyed this video to help us keep making more.

It’s Ant Love Forever.