Finding Queen Ants & Colonies #1 | My Trip to the Black Forest, Germany 

Thank you bud! :-)

Thanks bud! Haha would love to see you do a video on this 😁

Really nice to see you there I’m know staying at in the Black Forest and saw massive ant hills when I was biking like 1/2 meters high crawling with ants, would be a pain to fall into that ;)

Kat Milford I'm glad you liked it :-) Thank you!

Maurice Maaskant Thank you! :-) Hopefully I will make more videos like this in the future!

@@AntsBritania ill be on the lookout for them my friend, you just made a new subscriber you deserve more

I have 2 natural formicariums :-)

Can you do a video on them

jay n123 I will be doing an updated formicarium building tutorial soon...! :-D

I am glad you liked it! Thank you! :-)

oliver jordan I am honoured you think that :-) Thank you!

There's so much going on around us that we ignore daily

Thank you my friend! :-)

Thank you mate! :-)

Thanks for subscribing! :-) I'm glad you liked the video! I actually can't believe you have kept an ant colony in a swimming pool! Could you send me an image of this to my email? (antsbritain@gmail.com). It is extremely hard to keep a caught wild ant colony as they have been so used to the same conditions/environment for years.

Oh we didn't keep them in the swimming pool, we used kiddie pools (that's what I call them, the plastic pools about 6-7 feet across) to dump the dirt in out of the backhoe bucket and then filled the pools with water. The ants float, and you can then sift them off the top of the water. I keep all of the colonies I catch in aquariums with dirt in them (terrariums, I suppose) and the P. califonicus colony was so large we had to put it into a 240 gallon (I think, 8 feet long, 2 feet tall, 2 feet wide). I am not sure how many ants are in the colony but I know Mikey Busto (Ants Canada) says his fire ant colony is about a million strong and I would say this colony is at least as big. In this colony I have not confirmed the queen captured yet, unfortunately. I have been in the hobby for about 2 years, and in that time all the wild colonies I have caught are doing just fine and the queens are laying. That being said, I do try to duplicate the conditions the ants were found in as closely as possible, which I find isn't actually that hard, especially if you use naturalistic, bioactive set ups with plants etc. I will try to get some pictures of my setups and send them your way, unfortunately I am a bit old school and do not own a cell phone nor a camera, and actually the first time in my life I touched a computer was in 2016! But I will ask somebody to snap some pictures.

Oh right ok, I see! Sorry for my confusion lol! That sounds like an amazing and un heard of set up! Where abouts in the USA do you catch all these colonies? I guess if you go down the natrulistic aproach, as you are doing, it will be easier to raise a Wild Colony. I just know some people struggle when moving them into YTONG or Plaster Nests. No worries! Don't worry if you can't send any over, I am just being curious is all! :-)

My friends construction business does jobs in all of Northern CA from Oregon to Sacramento and from the coast to Nevada, so that is my collection range. The P.califonicus was found just outside Susanville CA and if anybody in the area is interested they are extremely numerous over there and their nuptial flights going to begin soon(ish)

Thank you! :-)

ants scotland Thank you mate!

ants scotland Same! Love this video style

Couldn’t agree more it’s like a nature show ants Britania definitely do more

Sorry to unpin your comment mate. I had to state something about my video and pin it for people to see. :-) I will be sure to make it up to you in the future!

It's a good thing I love Ants :-) Most people destroy those thatch nests in Germany as they feel they are pests :(

Ants Britania Even touching (like he did) isnt allowed

Ants from the Formica rufa group ( Red Wood Ant ) are protected by law in many European countries (D. Agosti pers. comm. 1995). including the United Kingdom, this has lead the species to be downgraded from Vulnerable to Near Threatened, only one place above Least concern, good news, they should be left alone and nest left un-disturbed

Wim Van den Heuvel Thank you very much :-)

Roy Lamers Of course I will! :-)

Thank you! :-)

Thank you! :-)

I should have mentioned this! But I honestly wasn't aware of the law at the time :-( I will be sure to do my research next time :-) Thank you!!

Ants Britania no problem, there is always room for improvement! ;) I just subscribed anyway :D

For sure! Thank you! :-)

I'm pretty sure it's similar to vinegar here in the UK! Yummy! :-)

Noooo, then u would atleast have awsome tasting vinegar

Norway*

TheVenomousViper I will definitely try that! Thanks for the insight 😁👍

Should the yolk be cooked or raw?

@@marmac567 raw

herculeanus and ligniperdus are almost identical

Well, in fact you can't identify most of these species like that with the naked eye. You can easily identify the gender like that if you're interested in ants but indentifying the specie like that is not really possible. For exemple, when he says "Myrmica rubra" he should actually say "Myrmica sp" (sp means it's an undetermined specie) because they are a few other Myrmica species in western Europe and you need a binocular to identify them :).

manu Man okay, but still he knows pretty much about them.

I agree. Also, it is unlikely that M. rubra may be present in pine forest. M. specioides, ruginodis, sulcinodis, sabuleti (...) are more common it that environment.

Dat is best zeldzaam in Nederland. Enig idee welke soort? Ligniperda, herculeanus, fallax …?

Yes! Today thousands flew! :-D

I am wait on the fire ant but don't know when it is all we have had at the mo is common black 🐜

Dragon Fire I am from London 😁

My aunt lives there and I visit at least once a year

The Queen will be hidden away amongst the workers. Are the Myrmica sp. ?

@@AntsBritania I dont know a lot about ants what is myrmica

@@AntsBritania it's a species in southeast asia yes I'm in india

ryan Dsouza solenopsis ?

Familien Gorel Bisgaard You are right! 😁

It is extremely difficult to call the right species. Between all of the members of Formica sensu structo you need a microscope to tell the difference.

You are right! But I should of been referring to them them as Formica sp. As you can never really tell unless you look at them under a microscope :-)

@@AntsBritania well not exactly species like rufabarbris and cunicalaria for example dont need a microscope and are easily IDed for species like lugabris, fusca, lemani and rufa yes microscope is needed

Arolyn Ramillete EXACTLY I have been looking for a Queen for 4 years and so many people just walk past Queen and I’m just screaming “HOW & WHY?!”

CoolJZW 3 Where do you live? It’s easy to find a queen in lasius niger season