Can I put Argentine Ants in an ant farm?

December 28, 2021 9:48 AM

I got a gel ant farm for Christmas. The weather is too cold to get ants shipped to me right now so I was curious if those tiny Argentine ants in my bathroom would work. Can't seem to find an answer over google... any thoughts are appreciated!
posted by Anonymousness to Pets & Animals (4 answers total)

Don't you need a queen to successfully keep ants? That might be a bigger obstacle than type of ant.
posted by emjaybee at 11:24 AM on December 28, 2021 [2 favorites]

Ant farms never come with queens (or at least they didn’t when I was a kid and I can’t imagine they would now, it seems like that would get pretty out of control pretty fast). The inevitable death of your ant colony inspired inspired one of my favorite Onion headlines.
posted by cakelite at 12:26 PM on December 28, 2021 [2 favorites]

My kids got an ant farm & we filled it with ants from the backyard because they were too impatient to order the special ones online. Unfortunately, the farm was designed for larger ants & the ones we used all escaped and took over the house. If you are using ants that are already in your house, maybe it doesn't matter as much, but this was not a fun experience for us.
posted by belladonna at 12:28 PM on December 28, 2021 [10 favorites]

You might need to research what the ants eat, since it might not be the same as what came with your kit. I know that when the Argentine ants (anyway, I always assume they're the Argentine ants) break into my house, a few drops of Terro will snuff them out within a couple days, because they love sugar. The same Terro is useless against carpenter ants, who stick to protein-rich food.
posted by polecat at 1:58 PM on December 28, 2021