Lasius flavus caresheet
Introduction
Ah yes. Good old Lasius flavus. The golden standard for every beginner ant keeper. These ants are fun, good sized and very easy to keep as pets.
Food
Lasius flavus are not picky eaters. They love sugars that come from fruit, sugarwater or ant jellys. For protein the best food for them is fruitflies, mealworms, crickets and other smaller insects.
If you feed insects from the wild freeze or boil these insects to sterilize them. Skipping this step can introduce mites to your colony.
Nest
Lasius flavus will do well in almost any formicarium or ant farm. The Esthetic Ants nests are all perfect for this species and your ants will trive in them.
Hibernation
Lasius flavus does not hibernate but has a diapause. Keeping these ants around 10-15 degrees during November until March greatly befinits these ants and will stimulate brood production after hibernation.
Species information
Lasius Flavus is the one of the most common ant species in Europe. They are very shy and seldom forage outside their nest. They tend to gras ahipds and milk them for their honeydew.
Lasius Flavus is monogyne (meaning their can only be one egg laying queen in the colony) but in the wild they can show polygynes behaviour meaning their can be multiple queens per colony. Colonies can grow up to 2,500-5,000 workers!
These ants have nuptial flights from July until September. A nuptial flight is a fenonamon where new ant queens (alates) fly out of the nest to meet and breed with ants from other colonies.
Workers get around 3 to 6 mm long and the queen is around 8 to 9 mm long. This species is medium size for an European species.
Temperature
Lasius flavus does not need to be heated. Keeping them at room temperature is more then fine. Heating these ants will speed up the brood progress but is not needed.
Sting/bite
These ants don't sting or bite. They are not agressive and will only become more active when disturbed.