Rebirth of the fire ants: After the tragic death of our OG fire ant colony, the Fire Nation, I sought out a brand new starting fire ant colony to assume the mighty fire ant throne. In this episode we meet our young fire ant queen and her brood, and provide the colony with something truly special. The footage captured in this video is truly magical. Hope you enjoy the humble beginnings of a fire ant colony, as we welcome them to our growing Antiverse.

STARTING A NEW FIRE ANT COLONY | REBIRTH OF THE FIRE ANTS

Last week, we said goodbye to one of the OG ant colonies of this channel.

It was with great sadness that we discovered that the Fire Nation, my five-year-old fire ant colony, had died out.

But with great endings come new beginnings, and I can’t wait to introduce to you the heirs to the Fire Nation’s throne.

AC Family, today we meet our brand new fire ant queen and her first pioneering generation of fire ant workers.

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Welcome to the AC Family. Enjoy!

New Fire Ant Colony

Behold!

The great successors of the Fire Nation.

What you’re seeing here is a new fire ant queen with her first generation of worker ants.

These ants are about to receive something truly special, so do keep on watching until the end to witness something magical this colony is about to receive.

Now, in this test tube setup, we have the queen—so gorgeous.

We also have the first set of workers, which are known as nanitics.

You can also see eggs, larvae, and pupae.

Check out that light-colored worker ant which recently eclosed from its pupal stage.

In a few days, it will be moving around like the other workers, and its exoskeleton will be properly hardened.

I find this fledgling fire ant colony to be so cute, and I feel they’ll quickly rise in numbers to take their place as the mighty fire ant colony of our Antiverse.

Now, I was thinking…

What should we name this colony?

Should we call them Fire Nation 2.0 or the Neo Fire Nation, or perhaps the Phoenix Nation, as was popularly suggested in last week’s video?

Let me know what you think we should name this great fire ant colony in the making in this iPoll here.

Thank you, AC Council, for your input!

You’ll notice the queen lays super still.

She’s actually resting and preserving her energy, and for good reason.

She’s currently not in her best form at the moment.

You see, the queen hasn’t eaten a real, full meal in weeks and has gone through quite a lot over the past month.

So get this—after a queen mates during her nuptial flight, she breaks off her wings and goes off to seal herself within a chamber in the soil, known as a claustral cell.

In this claustral cell, the queen does not eat and subsists entirely off energy stores in her back muscles, which previously powered her wings for flight.

She lays eggs, and once these eggs hatch into larvae, she feeds the larvae a self-made nutritious soup—again, created from her back muscle stores—which she regurgitates up for the larvae to eat.

The larvae grow, develop into pupae, then eclose into adult worker ants.

So, this queen here is starving.

She literally raised these workers and larvae off her own body tissues this whole time.

Sounds pretty crazy, but it’s what she’s built to do.

It’s important she doesn’t move around too much, though.

She must preserve her energy at all costs if she wants to survive to perpetuate the colony.

The success of the entire colony now lies in the hands of the nanitics.

The most important first task of these workers is to wander out into the world and bring back some food so the queen can finally eat after all these weeks of fasting.

And AC Family, guess what?

We’re about to make that moment happen now.

Feeding the Ants Honey

Let’s feed them!

AC Family, I can’t wait for us to see this!

Using a toothpick, I placed a tiny drop of honey into their test tube setup.

Now, let’s watch!

Instantly, a couple of ants discovered the honey.

Then a third came along to drink.

Then a fourth… a fifth… and a sixth came to drink.

A seventh ant came along, and an eighth.

It was awesome to see that the honey was such a hit!

You also have to remember that these ants have only known the self-made regurgitated soup from their mother, the queen.

I imagine, as great as that must taste, this honey must truly be blowing their minds right now!

Wouldn’t you think?

The queen began showing signs of excitement.

I think she had been informed that her nanitics had found something tasty just beyond.

A few minutes later, workers with full social stomachs came back to regurgitate the goods.

Feeding the Queen

At first, I saw the workers were feeding other workers.

This process of regurgitation and mouth-to-mouth feeding is called trophallaxis, something all eusocial insects like bees and termites do to distribute food among members of a colony.

Then, I noticed a worker feeding a larva.

I bet that larva was loving the honey!

When the worker was done feeding it, you could actually see the honey in the larva’s stomach through its semi-transparent body.

How neat, right?

And then finally, a worker moved in to give their starving queen mother her very first meal in weeks.

Just awesome!

More and more workers continued to feed their queen via trophallaxis.

She accepted their offerings graciously.

For me, watching a queen and nanitics of a starting ant colony receive their very first meal is truly one of the most beautiful things to witness in the hobby—one of those ant-keeping joys.

Over the next few days, I will continue to offer our fledgling fire ant colony various small meals, like a cricket leg or a mealworm head.

The days of fasting and subsisting on the queen’s own body tissues are now over, as the workers will be the ones feeding the queen and brood from now on.

With the queen properly nourished and a growing army of worker ants caring for her and her future brood, she no longer needs to do anything else but perform her primary duty of laying eggs.

I think it’s super cool for us to be able to start this awesome new journey with this new fire ant colony of ours.

I think it’s extra cool because it’s been years since we’ve been able to start an ant colony from scratch like this on the channel, and I think it would be great for us to watch how a massive fire ant colony—of the likes of our late Fire Nation—emerges from such humble beginnings.

Given ample food and resources, this species literally explodes in population, so I anticipate that this colony will need to move out of here in a week or two.

I plan on moving them first into a Hybrid Nest, and then once they outgrow that, move them into a terrarium perhaps.

But here’s the thing about moving them into the Selva de Fuego, the old home of our Fire Nation.

A lot of you spotted that the supermajor in last week’s episode had a blood-sucking mite on it!

It freaked me out because it meant that mites could have been responsible for wiping out the Fire Nation, and not the old age of the queen.

But, it could also be possible that the blood-sucking mites came after the queen had died and the population started to dwindle and weaken.

Whatever the case, I’m not going to take risks, and I have decided that I am going to have to ditch the Selva de Fuego and create an entirely new vivarium from scratch.

AC Family, are you as excited as I am about this new fire ant colony?

I look forward to building new memories together with them and learning about them.

I wonder if they have a different personality than the Fire Nation.

So much is in store ahead, so if you haven’t yet, SMASH that SUBSCRIBE button and BELL ICON now!

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

Last week, we asked:

“Which was your favorite memory of the Fire Nation?”

Congratulations to Patrick Tierney who answered:

“My favorite moment in the Fire Nation’s history was when they were escaping their enclosures.”

Congratulations, Patrick! You just won a free Ultimate Ant Keeping Handbook from our shop!

And with that, it’s Ant Love Forever! 🐜🔥

AC Question of the Week

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

What is the name of the process of mouth-to-mouth food transfer in eusocial insects?

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

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It’s Ant Love Forever! 🐜🔥