


On April 20th, I was searching for ant colonies in a firewood pile so I could make sure the ants didn’t meet a hellish demise. As I expected, I came across a nice Tapinoma sessile colony in a firewood piece, so I ran inside with the ant-infested wood. Once inside, I placed the log into a bin to contain the ants. Once that was done, I assembled their new home after I had cleaned all parts of it. The actual nest is an AusAnts small acrylic nest, perfect for containing small species such as these. I then started softly yeeting (moving) the ants into their foraging area, which was connected to the nest. Several hours and hundreds of soft yeets later, the colony was sitting happily in their new home. I counted three queens at the time the move was completed, but the next morning, I discovered a fourth queen ant. I do not know when she made it inside the outworld, but she apparently did. There was also a healthy amount of brood, which became most apparent once the move was done. All four queens seem uninjured as of today, which is also great.


When I decided to feed this colony for the first time, I provided them with a Q-tip head soaked in Sunburst Ant Nectar. I had actually provided this stuff to my previous Tapinoma colony, which died about a year ago. Sure enough, this new bunch of ants went absolutely nuts! Several hours later, the sunburst had been eaten, and I saw a lot of plump, happy-looking ants in the nest.