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[Saftron]

It's my 1st year of ant keeping so I don't really know too much about ants. Do ant colonies ever stop growing and if so does the queen stop producing eggs?

I have a Tetramorium sp. e queen that is set to have nanitics next week so I wanted to ask how big do these colonies get?

[ctantkeeper]

Tetramorium caespitum colonies often grow to 10,000 workers at maximum!!! But to answer your other question: Yes, colonies will often reach a certain range of a number of individuals before plateauing either because they do not have enough resources to push further or that they rate of eggs being laid won't allow further growth. Once the queen reaches the end of her life expectancy, her fertility will start to decrease and once she is gone, no new brood will be reared to replace the current generation of workers and the colony will eventually fizzle out. To promote healthy growth, slowly increase the amount of food given to your ants as their population increases (only give them roughly as much as they can consume). If the colony grows to a certain size, making it unfit to be kept, simply decrease the amount of food slightly. This will decrease the rate of brood growth and egg production, causing the size of the colony to stay constant.