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Has anyone kept Velvet ants before?

wasp velvet ants wasp keeping velvet ant keeping

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23 replies to this topic

#21 Offline FSTP - Posted January 14 2021 - 1:25 PM

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I kept them when I was a young teen. I would keep 2-3 at a time in a 10 gallon aquarium that had desert style landscape. I would feed them honey and water.  Though if I was doing it again now, I'd just use sugar water or byFormica Sunburst ant nectar. I never kept them that long maybe a couple months at a time and then would let them go back into the wild and find new ones. I did that for a couple years. They're really fun to watch. If you give them a large enough space they are constantly running around and exploring and climbing all over the place. As far as stinging, I was never stung, and its not really a great hazard. They're fairly docile and have to be really provoked to get them to sting. Also its not like you should really be handling them anyways so if you get stung, you likely deserved it, lol. 


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#22 Offline antsandmore - Posted January 14 2021 - 1:45 PM

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I kept them when I was a young teen. I would keep 2-3 at a time in a 10 gallon aquarium that had desert style landscape. I would feed them honey and water.  Though if I was doing it again now, I'd just use sugar water or byFormica Sunburst ant nectar. I never kept them that long maybe a couple months at a time and then would let them go back into the wild and find new ones. I did that for a couple years. They're really fun to watch. If you give them a large enough space they are constantly running around and exploring and climbing all over the place. As far as stinging, I was never stung, and its not really a great hazard. They're fairly docile and have to be really provoked to get them to sting. Also its not like you should really be handling them anyways so if you get stung, you likely deserved it, lol. 

lol. where did you catch them? were they common?


Ants I am keeping:

 none for now, planning on being more active this year


#23 Offline FSTP - Posted January 14 2021 - 4:34 PM

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Yes where I used to live in southern California they were pretty common, there were several species to. But this was in the late 90s. I have no idea how easy or common they are now. 



#24 Offline KitsAntVa - Posted January 14 2021 - 4:35 PM

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Look in places where it is dry but also dense in vegetation. Such as on a dry beaten path with tall grass around with like a creek or river around.
We don’t talk about that





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