Hobbies And Interests
Building the Ant Farm
Find an ant hill in your yard. Carefully dig into the dirt around the ant hill and dig it up, transferring some of the soft soil into a bucket. If you find any larvae with the white egg sacks or a queen ant, with wings, carefully transfer those into a separate area because they will be added to the ant farm last. Carefully add the softer soil, along with the ants, through a funnel into a narrow glass aquarium or large jar that has an airtight lid. Once you have added most of the soil and the worker ants, add the queen and the larvae. The worker ants will quickly relocate the queen. Then cover the aquarium or jar for a few hours to simulate an underground environment. All of the ants will quickly start working.
Types of Ants
There are a wide variety of ants but only a few you really want to put into an ant farm yourself, or even have in an ant farm at all. Fire ants and red ants are very aggressive and their multiple bites can be painful, hurting children and small animals considerably. These ants should clearly be avoided. Carpenter ants, black ants, and sugar ants are the best ants for the purposes of making your own ant farm because they won't bite, and they build the same intricate communities as these other ants.
Care and Feeding
As your ants in your ant farm have now become your personal pets, you must water and feed them properly so they can survive and their queen can continue to make more ants. A few drops of honey or a small bit of bread dipped in sugar water is a delicacy to them, as are tiny bits of fruit and vegetables. Although ants get most of their water from their food, a small cotton ball dipped in water helps to add moisture to the farm and provide the ants with added hydration. Be careful not to knock the ant farm over or shake it up--this will quickly destroy their tunnels and kill the ants.