Greetings AC Family,

As an ant keeper, it can be easy to feel like Lords of the ants, omnipotent beings celestially managing all aspects of the lives of the ants we care for. But this time, our brand new ant colony shocked us with their cleverness and skill! Hope you enjoy this week’s video! Meet our brand new carpenter ants!

Teleporting Carpenter Ants

But now, AC Family, some shocking news!

They always say great things come in threes.

The Black Dragons of El Dragon, these Diacamma ants of The Shire, and at the celestial birth

of these kingdoms was also born another epic ant kingdom!

AC Family, behold, the Shire’s twin domain known as the Grove.

That’s right, another ant colony!

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Welcome to the AC Family. Enjoy!

As ant keepers, it can sometimes be easy to feel like gods, deities in complete cosmic

control over a universe in which thousands or even millions of precious lives live under our care.

After all, we, as the ant keepers, actively control the environments our ants live in.

We control their food, we control their life events, and like omniscient beings managing

all aspects of their universe, we set up the stage to induce them to do what we want them

to do, like move into a new home we took the time to create for them.

For the most part, ants can be predictable, doing exactly what we plan for them to do.

But as you may have seen many times on this channel, sometimes it’s when we underestimate

the ants that they completely shock us!

This is exactly what happened to me with this ant colony I am about to introduce to you,

which managed to disappear without a trace, and believe me, you will want to keep watching

until the end for the big, shocking, and amazing revelation!

Our epic ant story begins here, in the Grove, a tropical forest groundscape I fashioned

and designed with care to be the future home of our third new ant colony this year.

It contained some attractive Peperomia and Maranta vegetation, with decorative pieces

of driftwood, along with a cute miniature species of Tillandsia.

A great red rock cliff made a statement at the center of the Grove.

I couldn’t wait to introduce our new ants into these lush, virgin territories.

In last week’s video, I gave you teasers in our hidden video as to what this special new

ant species we’d be introducing to the channel is, providing you clues in the form of a riddle.

So AC Family, very quickly, let’s revisit the riddle:

In the night, you’ll find them hunting,

When it’s cool and the moon is out,

Once seen in Bornean jungles, these ants without a doubt…

Are likely found where you live, in holes near hills of dust,

They’re hated by the world,

But completely loved by us…

These brand new ants are special, they’re natives, not a tramp,

Can you guess what new ants shall be setting up their camp?

I was delighted to see that a lot of you, AC Family, submitted some very worthy guesses.

Let’s see if you got it right!

Within this test tube lies our new, fledgling ant colony waiting to meet you.

AC Family, it is with immense pleasure and excitement that I introduce to you our new

precious friends.

Behold our brand-new… Carpenter ants.

Look at how gorgeous they are!

So many workers! Here you’ll see workers of various sizes, and they tend lovingly to

healthy brood piles. And that right there, nestled cozily in the middle of all of them,

is her royal highness—their queen. Just magnificent!

I just love their rusty orange-brown color. As indicated by the riddle, this particular

species of carpenter ant is mostly nocturnal, which is true for most carpenter ants native

to my particular region of the world in Southeast Asia.

At night, many insects emerge when it’s cooler, which also means better feeding, so these ants are indeed night owls.

We actually saw some impressive carpenter ants in a previous live stream on this channel during a nighttime trek through the Borneo jungle last year.

What’s amazing about this particular genus of ant is that they are found pretty much worldwide. I am certain the majority of you out there have seen a carpenter ant at some point in your lives.

Sadly, many carpenter ant species, as their name suggests, build their nests in wood, making them notorious house pests, often leaving piles of sawdust beneath their nest entrances. However, they don’t eat the wood, unlike termites.

For ant keepers, they’re a universal favorite because they’re large, easy to keep, common, and even polymorphic, meaning their workers come in different sizes and shapes!

Just take a look at the various sizes of workers seen in this starting ant colony. We have large majors with bigger heads and slender minors with smaller heads, and pretty soon, we can expect the massive supermajors to arrive! Oh, I just can’t wait!

They are a very diverse and widespread genus, and they generally aren’t classified as tramp or invasive ants in the areas they are found. Instead, they play important biological roles in their ecosystems.

So, AC Family, there you have it. The ants that will be setting up camp in the Grove are our new Camponotus ants, our new carpenter ants.

They’ll need a name too, so you know the drill! Leave your name suggestions for this colony in the comments, and I will choose my top 5 favorites for us to vote on in a future video.

Now, I’ve been keeping carpenter ants my whole life, and I am very familiar with their care. Naturally, I was confident these ants would be a breeze to care for, but little did I know they were about to give me the surprise of my life.

It was time to move them into the Grove.

These particular carpenter ants, whose queen and starting workers were collected from my area, were found living inside a rotting bamboo stick. So I tried my best to replicate this habitat in the Grove by fixing a hollowed-out bamboo stick right up against the glass, hoping the carpenter ants would move in where we could still see them.

I felt this was going to be easy, and the move would be straightforward. The upper portion of the Grove was already lined with a layer of fluon barrier to keep these carpenter ants inside.

AC Family, are you ready to do this? It’s time to move our brand-new ants into their new home.

I placed the exposed test tube inside the Grove, ensuring the opening was close to the hollow bamboo, which I covered with black paper to make the inside nice and dark.

Alright, now to remove the cotton. Here we go: 1… 2… 3…

The ants seemed reluctant at first. “Come on, ladies! Come out. Trust me, you will love it here!”

Finally, the workers decided to wander out and step onto Grove territory, and, surprisingly, directly into the darkness of the hollow bamboo! I couldn’t believe it. This was too easy!

I told you, I knew carpenter ants, didn’t I?!

This started a chain reaction, with the message of a cool new home spreading throughout the colony. The ants began to pick up and relocate. Workers carried brood into the bamboo hollow, and in less than 20 minutes, the entire ant colony had moved in.

Checking the test tube, I was pleased to discover it had been almost completely evacuated, with remaining workers urging stubborn ants to join the rest in the bamboo and bringing back any leftover brood.

This move was too easy, and I already knew keeping this new carpenter ant colony would be enjoyable.

That was until I decided to peek into the bamboo hollow.

You won’t believe what I saw.

AC Family, our carpenter ants had vanished.

What?! Where did they go?

I literally watched them move the entire colony into the bamboo! I searched all possible crevices, under and at the ends of the bamboo. There was no sign of our new ant colony.

Where could they have gone?

I tried my best not to panic. They had to be in there somewhere, right?

I assumed that eventually, come feeding time, I would see workers foraging and could easily follow them to wherever they were nested.

Night fell, and on the first night, I placed some of my sweetest, most irresistible honey and a pre-killed baby cockroach.

There was no sign of carpenter ants.

Despite leaving food out for the ants every single night, there was no sign of ants anywhere.

After three days of disappearance, I was really concerned. Then a week went by with no ants seen anywhere, and then two weeks.

When almost three weeks passed, I was losing hope.

Had the ants gone into some kind of remission due to unsuitable habitat?

I was so sure they were going to love the Grove!

Were my food offerings not right? Perhaps the temperature or humidity of their home was off? Maybe they were dying out due to unfavorable conditions I hadn’t considered. Could they have escaped?

My mind raced with dire scenarios, and I was close to completely tearing the Grove apart in hopes of finding our ants.

Suddenly, I received flashbacks of searching for our Titans, desperately digging through the Garden of Eden.

Should I go to ground to search for our new ants?

Ultimately, I decided to hold back a little longer.

One day, I decided to water the plants in the Grove. In my complete worry, I had actually forgotten to water the plants over the past few weeks.

And AC Family, will you believe this?

As I watered, I noticed some of the water draining down a very discreet and diminutive opening in the ground beneath the great rock cliff at the center of the Grove.

There was a hole here!

Suddenly, some movement caught my eye.

To my utter surprise, behind the rock, I saw our missing carpenter ants, surfacing to avoid the water entering their nest, which was now clearly somewhere beneath the great rock cliff!

Wow! They had been here all along!

How did they get here? How had they survived so long without food?

So many questions ran through my mind, but I was totally relieved that our carpenter ants were alive and well this entire time!

And soon, look who else decided to make an appearance: her royal carpentry highness herself—the queen.

Even in this state of rained-out nest protocol, these ants were absolutely beautiful to watch. Look at how their exoskeletons glisten in the light!

It was then that I noticed some of the workers had fully extended gasters, clearly filled with stored food.

Ah-ha! So, this was how the colony had survived all this time!

These ants had repletes—special workers designated as living food stores for the rest of the colony.

The ants must have discreetly sent out workers on some nights to consume the food I left out, then deposit the pre-digested food into the repletes via regurgitational mouth-to-mouth transfer—an incredible behavior called trophallaxis.

How clever of them!

Now, I make sure to feed them near their nest opening, and if I’m lucky, I can catch them eating.

But one question still lingered: how did the ants teleport from the bamboo to their location under the rock?

Last night, I randomly decided to place food on top of the bamboo, just to challenge the ants a bit. To my surprise, they came, but they emerged from within the bamboo!

Ah-ha!

This told me that on the night of their move, they must have begun excavating a tunnel underground, which eventually led all the way to beneath the central rock cliff!

Wow!

This means they did all of that within 20 minutes. Before the final workers evacuated their test tube, the majority of the colony had already burrowed deep into the soil and far from view.

They completely hacked us, AC Family!

This is a display of incredible digging speed and a great reminder that perhaps my idea of being the Lord of the ants is not entirely accurate.

My relationship with the ants I care for is more of a partnership. I provide them with the things they need to survive, and they offer us an exclusive peek into the workings of nature—not on our terms, but on theirs.

They choose what they want to do, where they want to go, what they want to eat, and when.

I am totally okay with this relationship.

As long as I remember that ant-keeping is a partnership, the ants will continue to satisfy our deepest curiosity and intrigue about nature.

And speaking of this delicate and important partnership, it seems one of our biggest ant colonies on this channel has been long deserving of their own territory upgrade and expansion.

Many of you have shared this sentiment!

AC Family, you demanded it: an update on the most famous and long-standing ants on this channel—the Fire Nation, our massive and ravenous fire ant colony.

These ants are the OGs of the AntsCanada ant channel, and it’s time to give them a new home.

So AC Family, I would like to introduce you to a great new kingdom where fire and water shall meet!

AC Family, behold!

The “Selva de Fuego”, the Jungle of Fire!

Here we go, AC Family! Things are about to heat up!

Our very own Fire Nation is about to move into a brand-new upgraded home—the largest paludarium setup I’ve ever made.

And trust me, you won’t want to miss this huge Fire Nation episode. So hit that subscribe button and bell icon now to stay notified, and don’t forget to hit the LIKE button every single time, including now!

AC Inner Colony, I’ve left a hidden cookie for you here if you’d like to watch some super satisfying, extended play footage of our new Camponotus ants moving in and feeding.

Trust me, it’s super relaxing and therapeutic to watch the ants, so give it a try! You never know what you might find in these hidden videos.

Also, I’d like to plug my new daily vlogging channel for those curious about what I do in between these weekly ant videos. My daily vlogs document my travels around the world and often include lots of science and biology content!

Alright, now it’s time for the AC Question of the Week!

Last week we asked:

What makes Diacamma ants different from Bullet Ants?

Congratulations to (well, I’m not sure how to pronounce this username) 陈灯强. Here was their response:

Diacamma ants are different from Bullet Ants because they are in a different genus, and Diacamma don’t have queens.

Congratulations, ant lover! You’ve just won a free e-book handbook from our shop!

In this week’s AC Question of the Week, we ask:

What does polymorphic mean?

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

By the way, for those of you in North America and Europe, the season to find queen ants has officially started!

If you want to start ant-keeping, check out the easy-to-use ant farms and ant-keeping kits we offer at AntsCanada.com.

We’ve been designing and making ant farms for almost a decade and ship worldwide, with full email customer support if you ever have questions.

I’d love for you to keep ants with me!

Hope you can subscribe to the channel as we upload every Saturday at 8 AM 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!