Dear Ant Lovers, I’ve got an update for you on the Phoenix Empire (fire ant colony), other ant colonies, and the various critters of the Ant Room. There’s some good and bad news to share in today’s episode that involves the ants/critters, this channel, and all of you. It’s all been on my mind non-stop. What do you guys think we should do?

SOME SAD NEWS | UPDATE ON MY ANTS & THE CHANNEL

Guys, I’ve got some really good and bad news to share with you today.

AC Family, it’s time to talk about it.

Welcome to the AntsCanada Ant Channel!

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The Good News

Welcome to the AC Family! Enjoy!

I’m sure you guys have a ton of questions, but I promise to go over everything.

The good news made me smile this week, and I’ll be getting to that in a sec, but as for the bad news, when I learned about it, it made me really, really sad, especially because I don’t think I nor any of you guys can do anything about it.

Anyway, keep watching until the end because I’ll be needing your help on how to deal with the situation I’m now facing.

But let’s get to the good news first!

It has to do with my fire ant colony, the Phoenix Empire.

If you’re new to the channel, or perhaps haven’t been following the progress of my latest ant colony, this here is the City of Ashes—an expansive metropolis, home to a booming fire ant colony known as the Phoenix Empire.

It’s incredible to know that the colony went from just a queen in a test tube and some eggs to this massive fire ant city in about four months.

The colony is now easily numbering in the hundreds of thousands.

A Tour of the City of Ashes

As a quick update tour through the City of Ashes, we start here at the Mothernest—the Fire Fortress, an AC Ant Tower from AntsCanada.com, which is full of brood—i.e., young fire ant eggs, larvae, and pupae.

I suspect the queen is living somewhere in here, and perhaps we may see her later.

Above ground, the ants are busy with various activities, and those white creatures you see there? Springtails!

These tiny critters serve as the colony’s cleanup crew, welcome allies of Phoenix Empire society, freely moving throughout the City of Ashes, cleaning up the ants’ garbage.

You’ll see them all over the place!

Moving through the network of tubes, the ants have customized them into legit underground tunnels—using gravel and soil to create barricades, which, I’m guessing, somehow help the ants manage their busy traffic to and from different parts of the city.

In fact, they’ve customized all areas of their territories to make them more fire ant-friendly.

Check out this chamber, for instance—an AC Test Tube Portal, which used to be a clean and sleek crossroads.

Well, now the ants have completely made it their own, decorating it to their tastes with gravel and debris.

Whoa—check out that huge supermajor lumbering by!

The Phoenix Empire’s New Sugarland

As you might have seen in a previous video, where I had the fire ants undergo a taste test experiment, the Phoenix Empire now has a new chamber for sugary foods.

Feel free to leave name suggestions for this Phoenix Empire sugarland in the comments!

Moving on now to Hell’s Kitchen, which, as you may have seen in a previous video, has also been completely redecorated and customized to their liking.

Now, you guys may be wondering what happened to that extra chamber called Shelfordella, which held a colony of roaches that would fall into Hell’s Kitchen.

Well, as some of you predicted, all the roaches ended up falling in, so none were left to breed.

I think if we try something like this again in the future, I would need to incorporate valve connectors—which we do have at the AC Shop—and simply open and close the roaches off so they’re not all eaten at once.

So, as you can see, the City of Ashes is quite expansive now, and Phoenix Empire life is very busy.

But it’s time to show you the good news!

The ants are currently preoccupied with their latest major operation, which filled me with joy.

The Hybrid Nest

Many of you have been asking if the ants have finally moved into their AC Hybrid Nest Mini, which I introduced to them four weeks ago.

Because the colony was so used to digging, they initially treated the space as more of a transit hub—like a train station where their highways could pass through and ants could casually hang out.

But peeking into the Hybrid Nest this week, I saw this…

Brood piles, brood piles, brood piles, brood piles!

What a sight!

There were tons of fire ant eggs, larvae, and pupae all piled up in the various chambers.

AC Family, look at them!

It was just amazing to see!

Their highways weaved through the tunnels of the Hybrid Nest, passing by various groupings of young.

I stared at the beautiful sight of it all for hours!

One of the reasons I loved this so much was because I’ve missed seeing a clear, unobstructed view of what goes on inside the nest.

It’s been a while.

As much as I love observing the ants digging their own tunnels in their Fire Fortress, we sacrifice some visibility when the ants are given the liberty to dig.

They are still able to partially hide behind soil, but here in the Hybrid Nest, we could see everything.

I tried to look for the queen, but couldn’t spot her.

Can you guys see her?

The Bad News

Alright, so now that you’ve heard the good news, it’s time for the bad news.

No, it’s not about my other ant colonies or critters.

They are all fine, healthy, and growing well.

The bad news has to do with this channel… and all of you guys.

This week, I received an email from YouTube that said this:

(Insert YouTube email regarding the removal of poll cards.)

If you’ve been following this channel for a while, you’ll know why this is very upsetting.

This entire channel is driven by you guys.

But now, YouTube is removing the poll function in the iCards.

And having that interactive element taken away makes me super, duper sad.

How Can We Stay Connected?

So, this is where I’ll need your help, guys.

How can we stay interactive and connected despite losing the poll function?

• Should we use the comments for voting?

• Provide a link to vote on the Community Tab?

• Leave poll options as separate comments, and you guys can vote via THUMBS UP?

Whatever the case, I’m not mad at YouTube.

This ant channel went from zero subscribers to over 3 million.

Together, we grew like an ant colony—and we continue to grow every single day.

We’re an unstoppable force, AC Family.

Outro

AC Family, did you enjoy today’s episode?

What do you guys think?

How can we still preserve interaction, which is vital to the channel?

If you haven’t yet, do SMASH that SUBSCRIBE button and BELL ICON now, and hit ALL so you get notified at every upload.

Also, don’t forget to LIKE this video—including now!

It’s ant love forever! 🐜❤️