Each successive year I get more and more questions from buyers around the world, almost exclusively on Instagram (with text messaging and Discord a close second), on how to care for their colonies that was purchase from another seller.
Some species are easy and straight forward, while others such as Myrmecocystus (honeypots) - the ones featured prominently on my Instagram - require specific care, especially during the first 6 months of founding. There are a few ways you can rear them, but there is no one "online tutorial" or all encompassing youtube video on how to do this.
There are journals from Drew, but that's about it.
I've created my own method for rearing honeypots (nothing like Drew's) which has been tweaked over 5 years of trial and error and works quite well, but none of it is documented here or anywhere online (this is a hobby, I am an adult with adult responsibilities and cannot spend time making ant videos and tutorials). If all you watch is Ants Canada and think you can just stick honeypots in a test tube setup and call it a day, that won't work.
Last year, countless people messaged for support regarding Myrmecocystus mexicanus queens. Many of these buyers purchased these for $100 USD per queen from a Texas seller. Whether you obtained them legally or illegally is not at discussion here, so please do not bring that up on this thread.
The reason for this post is two fold. To let buyers know I simply cannot be answering hundreds of your messages a day on how to care for honeypots. And second, to let sellers know it should be their duty and obligation to give your buyers some level of support, post sales.
If you buy an iPad or iPhone, you call Apple for support, not Microsoft. As silly as this sounds, this goes the same for ant colonies.
For example, I only sale colonies that I know how to care for past their second year. If I do not have any experience getting them past that sophomore year successfully, they are not put up for sale. I've said this many times, but selling ants pays for the hobby, which gets expensive - but there's no profit.
I'm an old man (over 40, ha!) and have been doing this beloved hobby most of my life. I have seen how many of buyers (mostly kids) are influenced by YouTube and come to me with a certain mindset and expectation of what they want, and I have to many times shatter those expectations. Contrary to what you think, there is very little information online on proper antkeeping, and most of what you see out there is to simply entertainment masked as education.
