One of my better purchases in recent days was an ant farm, a self-contained environment in which a coven of ants can learn to harmoniously coexist. Despite having no queen and therefore no future, these ants cooperate to build magnificent structures, mounds of sand or gel or dirt or what-have-you that attest to the singular fact that yes, these ants existed. Meanwhile, I reign supreme, an overlord watching every pitiful move that the workers make, constructing their monument that only you will ever see. I watch as they build their tiny society, observe their scurrying, and will ultimately view their demise. Sound like fun? Of course it does. Read on to find out how you too can run a successful ant farm.
After obtaining an ant farm, you of course need to obtain some ants. As mentioned above, it is customary not to purchase a queen along with the farm. For otherwise, the ants will begin reproducing exponentially. A colony of ants working to build you a monument is one thing, while a swarm of ants filling a farm to overflowing is quite another. Add this to the fact that ant companies typically prefer to sell you multiple batches of ants over a single batch of ants which you may culture (and perhaps ultimately use to start your own ant company), and it should not be surprising that queens are not allowed in the farm.
Wait until your ants arrive. Once they do, open the package in which they were shipped. Most manufacturers will send you a single test-tube full of starving ants. Now you are faced with a very difficult problem: opening the test tube, dumping all of the ants into the farm, and sealing the farm, all without letting the ants escape or even touch your hands. (Harvester ants are known to bite, and while their venom is rarely fatal, it is generally considered bad form to kill one’s pets. That being said, the ant companies will typically make this process as convoluted as possible so that you are likely to buy another shipment of ants after killing the first during transplantation, as this process is known in entomology.)
At this point, there are several options. The first and simplest is the Harvard technique. Open the ant farm and position the test tube over it, turning it over so that gravity will suck the ants downward. Using a clamping apparatus such as a pliers, carefully remove the cap from the test tube. In one movement, drop the test tube into the farm, and as quickly as possible, seal the top. If all has gone to plan, you will now have ants in your ant farm, although you’re also stuck with an unwanted test tube. Unfortunately, it turns out your ants will actually much prefer the test tube to the farm environment, because the test tube is absolutely covered in ant pheromones. The lure of pheromones is so intense that ants have been known to starve to death, sitting in the test tube, never thinking to explore the outside world. If you choose to go this route, every hour for the next 48 hours you should thus tilt the ant farm horizontally until all of the ants have fallen out of the test tube. You will likely note that many of them will return to their pheromone-laden home, but fear not… after enough iterations of this technique, they will never return to that place of death again.
The second option is the MIT technique, and is outside the scope of this blog post. It requires the use of an airlock to implement. Ultimately however, you end up with ants in the farm and no test tube.
In any case, the ants are now in the farm. How can you make them build? Well, this is fortunately a solved problem. With proper unionizing, you can be assured of productive labor and positive relations between the workers and the overseers. Stay tuned for part 2, where we explain in excruciating detail how to facilitate the process.