YES! In about 21 days.
One day, I decided to check out some firewood pieces to find out if one contained an ant colony. the reason I did this was to save any colony I found from being burned alive in the woodstove downstairs. Shortly after beginning my search, I spotted a queen alate in one of the logs. I proceeded to hurriedly ferry the log inside and placed it in a large tub to contain the ants. Soon after, I began to attempt extracting the colony from the wood. This proved to be far more difficult, but I was helped by the fact that the log was drying out, therefore becoming a less than ideal choice of nest. I also used a toothpick to open several chambers, reducing the number of places for them to hide in. A few days later, I noticed a large group of ants under the log, so I lifted the log to see roughly how large the colony was. It was far smaller than I previously anticipated, but I did get to see most of the brood, as well as the all-important egg-laying queen, who at the time was resting on the heap of brood. They did quickly move back into the wood, but I had garnered some useful facts about this colony, such as how much brood they had.
Now that I knew roughly how large the colony was, I realized that they would only need two test tubes at most, so I crafted a test tube that had an Acorn Empire-style entrance. Upon completing the tube, I convinced about 75% of the colony to move off the log. Once in position, I placed the open end of the tube right next to them and went to bed. The next morning, I looked at the place where the large group was, and they were gone! Peeking inside the test tube, I saw a brown mass of workers and alates, as well as a smaller white mass made of brood. I placed some cotton inside the small length of vinyl tubing to keep the ants contained, then began to search the tube for the queen. To my frustration, it turned out she wasn’t in there. I proceeded to clean an outworld that wasn’t currently being used. In order to make the ants feel more at home when they discovered and subsequently explored their new outworld, I threw in reasonably small chunks of the log which had been broken off to create a more naturalistic floor. Shortly after the ants were connected to the new space, they eagerly began exploring. Meanwhile, I moved to round up the remaining stragglers, including the queen, by crafting another test tube for them to move into. That night, they moved in, or so it seemed. That morning, I discovered, to my great annoyance, that I had been totally trolled! They hadn’t moved in, despite the fact that I saw the queen ant move into the test tube.
I switched my strategy of transferring the remaining ants in the log to something I call “Worker transport”. Worker transport is a method I used to great effect to move stubborn ants. Step 1. collect at least one worker on a toothpick. Step 2. move the toothpick so that the ant is in the outworld. Step 3. get the ant off the toothpick so it can rejoin its family. Step 4. repeat until all ants are in your setup (please do not try this with fragile members of the colony. e.g brood, newly eclosed adults, and the egg-laying queen(s)). Fortunately, all of the brood was removed with the capture of the first group, so I did not need to worry about leaving any brood. To move the queen, I carefully picked her up using the empty test tube, gingerly carried her to the outworld, and gently allowed her to walk off of the tube to be reunited with the rest of her family. Thankfully, the queen was unharmed during the procedure.
