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Okay. I have my ant farm. Now where do I get ants for it?
Where To Get Your Ants
There are various ways that you can obtain ants; you can simply capture some workers from a large nest and place them into the ant farm/tank and they will soon settle in. However, a colony without a queen will not last long and will eventually die out leaving the ant farm empty. If you wish to have a queen in the colony then you can do either of the following:
Wait until the mating flights. These take place between late spring and late summer depending on the species of ant involved, though for most ants it is late summer. I am sure you have all seen the flying ants that emerge from ant nests by the thousands every year, much to the annoyance of many of the unenlightened. These are the mating flights. If you look closely at the flying ants as they scurry around outside the nest you will notice that they come in two sizes; larger than the normal worker ants, and smaller. The large flying ants are the ones you will be interested in, these are the new queens. However, do not take them yet as you will not get them to make a new colony. You have to allow nature to take its course and allow the ants to fly away to mate. The time to get your queen ant is after they have mated. How do you know when they have mated? As the ants start to fly have a walk around and keep your eyes on the ground; it's probably best to wait for 30 minutes to an hour after you first notice the ants starting to fly. As you scan the ground you should notice larger than normal wingless ants running around on the ground. These are the newly mated queens who have shed their wings and are looking for a suitable nesting site. Grab one and place her in your ant farm, replace the lid, cover the sides of the ant farm up, and wait. Alternatively, there are various places that you can purchase queen ants from; most notably is the German company called "Ant Store", a company that I have used before, and highly recommend (they also sell ant farms.) Based in Germany they stock many species of ants from around the world. A links to this company can be found on the “Contact” page.