Bay Area Ants

     For the past few years, I have been experimenting with different methods of starting colonies of Pogonomyrmex subdentatus , a red harvester ant, and one of the few species that is found in the Bay Area. This spring, I put some of the queens I caught into a test tube setup with an out world. In the past, I have not had much success with test tubes for this species. However, I decided to try making the entrance to the tube-nest smaller by plugging it with cotton, and using a straw as an entrance tunnel.     In addition to this setup, I provided the queens in test tubes with abundant seeds and crushed freeze-dried meal worms, as food for their larvae. Like all my other Pogonomyrmex subdentatus  colonies, I kept them at 88-92F, which helped them grow and develop at a healthy pace.     Six months later, and I have a thriving colony in one of these setups. This colony is about 6 months old, and although growth was slow at first, it is now growing at a steady rate. Here is a video I took