Hi, I'm from Massachusetts and just got into ant keeping this spring. Back in April I had a chance encounter with an ant startling me when crawling across my face at night and accidently swiped her off, causing her to lose a leg sadly, but when I discovered it was a black carpenter queen (c. pennsylvanicus I think) I did the obvious thing and kept her. Unfortunately I ignorantly did EVERYTHING wrong and Antoinette didn't survive my learning process, only lasting 2 weeks in my first ant farm as I started my research after buying it from a local store. So then I got a few tubes of Pogonomyrmex harvesters from the empty any farm (yeah, I know now, no queen is lame and pointless) which I still enjoy watching although there's only about 20 of them left now out of the 50 I started with. They are basically my guinea pigs for learning what is good or not to feed my ants, and I had an issue with a bad container of fruit flies.
That's when I decided to take another shot at founding a real colony after watching a lot of ant videos and learning more, so I went ahead and bought a camponotus pennsylvanicus queen in June, who arrived with a healthy looking brood and 1 worker. I proceeded to attempt to attach her new tube to a micro outworld to feed the 1 worker and that was another mistake, which leads to the present day situation of Antoinette2 still only having a brood and no workers, and that story and thread is in the General Anting section asking for advice.
I couldn't keep myself from getting a second queen for long though, so a week later I got a camponotus novaebarensis queen, but this time with 5 workers, and her colony is doing excellent today with 12 workers in a little petri dish nest with a small outworld. I'm super careful about everything I do with her and all food sources get tried out with the queenless harvesters first because I'm paranoid about messing up again. So far, so good with Samantha's colony.
Now I've got a 3rd colony incoming that is yet another Camponotus queen with a few workers, Chromaiodes this time with a mini hearth nest once it's made.
That will likely (maybe) be the last ant I try starting with for this year, although next year I want to try different species, and attempting to catch my own. Unfortunately I've learned the hard way that I am allergic to stinging ants, much like I'm allergic to bees and wasps, so I probably won't get any more Pogonomyrmex harvesters. I will take good beginner ant recommendations though! Preferably something different from my slow to grow carpenter ants, and not with stingers, and native to the northeast US where I'm from.
