War vs. Pharaoh Ants

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We all know Ants Canada .. His ad ridden click baiting titles are distasteful but regardless we all know of him and his videos so I don't see a reason to post it here if it's in every ant sub..

👍︎︎ 3 👤︎︎ u/YaBwoy 📅︎︎ Nov 26 2017 🗫︎ replies
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Oh man! A great ant war has begun, a battle against one of the most feared and hated ants in the entire world. Today, we declare war on Pharaoh ants. In last week's video we discovered that two alien ant colonies had broken into our Garden of Eden, the name given to the giant terrarium that is home to our beloved Marauder Ant colony, which you guys have named The Titans. The first invaders were some cowardly Black Crazy Ants, that had set up camp somewhere in the Garden of Eden but they appeared to respect the authority of our Titans so we weren't too concerned. The other ant invaders, however, were a super army of small but menacing Pharaoh ants with many queens, whom we caught stealing and monopolizing all food meant to feed our Titans. This week, AC Family, we wage war against these Pharaoh ants who you believe pose an immediate threat, and my grand plan to eliminate them from the Garden of Eden involves some cool traps and a Line of Death! We also make two incredible discoveries about these pharaoh ants, and of course, this wouldn't be an AnstCanada video without a plot twist? So keep on watching until the end for the surprise ending! Put on your armour, AC Family, and let's go into battle with these pharaoh ant invaders from the outside, and show them they cannot and will not destroy our Titans, in this nerve-wrenching episode of the AntsCanada ant channel. Please SUBSCRIBE to my channel, and hit the bell icon. Welcome to the AC Family. Tired of nature channels not showing nature shows. Just watch this channel. Enjoy. The events that took place last week in the Garden of Eden were an eye-opener. Our resident Marauder ants, some newly residing black crazy ants, and intruding pharaoh ants. Three different ant species meeting in a single place. The ultimate drama that ensued from this meeting blew me away. If you haven't seen last week's video you can watch it here. Basically, through this epic clash of these three ant clans, we discovered that ants going to war didn't necessarily mean ants killing each other to the death. No. Surprisingly, we saw that ant wars could consist of alpha ants grappling with weaker ants, as we saw in last week's episode, when our majestic Titans rushed in to claim their rightful cockroach meal from the black crazy ants. But what I found the most alarming, were the pharaoh ants. They moved in and out of the terrarium freely, despite the presence of a baby powder barrier. This colony had many queens, and aggressive workers, proving to be a powerful force. They possessed the ferocity to even take food from our Titans. And that's when you spoke, AC Family! I asked you last week what you felt about our new ant neighbours, and so many of you, expressed that although you felt the black crazy ants weren't much a threat to our Titans at the moment, you insisted that the pharaoh ants were, and had to be dealt with immediately. I don't blame you, guys for feeling so strongly. Pharaoh ants, whose name possibly arises from the mistaken idea that it was one of the plagues of ancient Egypt, have become a major pest of residences, commercial bakeries, factories, buildings, and hospitals worldwide. They're a true metropolitan ant, having invaded nearly all parts of the world by way of human activities, likely the transport of goods on which they secretly hitch rides. Nobody knows for sure where Pharaoh ants originated from, but it is suspected they came from Africa. Although they are a tropical ant, they've still managed to thrive in colder climates like the US and Europe by living inside heated buildings. They've also been known to be carriers of harmful microbes like salmonella and e. coli. There's no doubt, pharaoh ants are tough, resourceful, and big trouble in a little package. And it seems this supercolony of pharaoh ants has had their eye on the Garden of Eden. Every time I place food into the Garden of Eden to feed the Titans, the pharaoh ants come swarming instantly, slipping stealthily in and out of the terrarium with ease, despite the presence of a baby powder barrier, claiming the food before the Titans couldever get to it. They also defend this food aggressively. One night, I watched as the pharaoh ants ate all the chicken wing bones I placed into the Garden of Eden. Chicken wing scraps were always one of the Titan's favourite food, but now no Titan was seen in sight. Only the pharaoh ants feasting, while the black crazy ants hovered around, too afraid to get close but wanting to. Suddenly, something caught my eye. There, AC Family. Look! It was a pile of dead Titans! Had they been attacked and killed by the pharaoh ants and dumped here? This was the final straw! The pharaoh ants needed to be eradicated, for the safety of our Titans! In fact, I realized that the safety of all our ants in this ant room were at stake! Who was to say that the pharaoh ants wouldn't also choose to invade the Hacienda Del Dorado, the kingdom of our Golden Empire? Or the connected villas of our Dark Knights? Perhaps even our most aggressive fire ants, the Fire Nation, were not safe from these pharaoh ant raids. You guys called for it, and AC Family, I fully support your call to action! It was time to go to war, a war against these ruthless Pharaoh Ants. We needed to save our Titans! OK, so are you ready for this? Here was my plan. Phase One: Locate the site of colony! I needed to know where the pharaoh ants were stationed. For sure they had moved into my place recently from the outside. Highly nomadic and known to form extremely long foraging trails, pharaoh ants cover some amazing distance when they travel. I followed the trail of pharaoh ants and it took me up the glass, across this bracket to the west side of the Garden of Eden, down the glass, and across this entanglement of wires. From here the ants formed a trail up my curtain, across the air conditioning unit, crossing this shelf, along the doorway of my bathroom, down this long stretch of wall, up this door frame and surprisngly into the Cavern of Darkness, a hole which leads through the dry wall accommodating the tube of our Dark Knights. My goodness! The pharaoh ants were living between my walls! Alright, and now for Phase Two: The Line of Death. Stopping all food provisions into the Garden of Eden for a couple days, caused for only a few pharaoh ants to be seen wandering inside. I needed there to be as little pharaoh ants as possible before using my secret weapon. Now I've never featured this secret weapon on this channel before because I've never needed it, until now. AC Family, behold. Diatomaceous Earth chalk. I've used it to effectively battle cockroaches in the past, and it has never failed me, not once. This powerful stuff is composed of microscopic fossilzed remains of plankton called diatoms. Under a microscope these diatoms look like shards of glass, and AC Family get this! Once these particals of diatomaceous earth get onto an insect, it punctures them, absorbing vital lipids in their exoskeleton, and the insect dies of dehydration! What's totally amazing is that diatomaceous earth is actually non-toxic, and unlike regular chemical pesticides, there is no potential buildup of tolerance like there is to poisons because the method of killing is PHYSICAL, not chemical. In fact, you've probably even eaten this stuff before, perhaps even today! They add diatomaceous earth to a multitude of grain-based foods like cereal, oats, bread, flour, rice, and muffins in order to kill beetles which typically infest grain-based foods. But warning: Don't eat this pest chalk, because companies can blend in other materials into it which could be harmful if ingested. For those of you who have followed this channel for awhile now, you know that I make it a rule to never kill ants, even if they're pests, but I feel this could be classified as a dire situation requiring some extreme measures, because the safety of all our pet ants is in jeopardy. I proceeded to outline the periphery of the terrarium with the chalk. I made sure to go all the way around to the back. I also made sure to chalk the wires of the lighting. No ants could now cross these chalked areas and survive. Another thing to note, though was that this chalk barrier was only effective for a couple days because the moisture in the humid air of Manila, where I live, renders the diatomaceous earth chalk ineffctive after awhile. This chalk needs to stay dry in order to work. And now for the most critical phase, AC Family: Setting of the Traps. I prepared a pair of acrylic containers each with holes on opposing sides. In one hole, I fixated a piece of polyvinyl tubing. The tubing of one of these containers was placed against the wall near one of the pharaoh ants' foraging trails, and the tubing to the other, pressed up against the adjacent trap. And now to add our bait. In our first trap, a delicious cockroach, irrresistable to any prospective pharaoh ant, and in the second trap perfectly suited to our alien ant invaders, Mars chocolate. I made sure to wipe the tweezers along the outside of the tube to get the smell of the bait all over it. Also, I had to place the covers on these traps so the smell of our bait, would fill the inside. We needed our traps to smell tantalizing! Next, we required some messenger pigeons! Informant pharaoh ant workers to squeal, and tell the colony of the tasty food inside our traps. With a cotton ball I gently collected a few worker ants and threw them into the traps along with the bait. The idea was to get these ants to find the food, and excitedly run back home to tell the rest of the colony to come and eat, and look! It seems the ants were acting exactly as planned, having discovered our bait and feeding on it. They will soon make their way back to the colony, leaving a pheromonal trail all the way home, which will help direct the ants to the food and into our traps. Let's hope this works, AC Family! I decided to come back later to check and see if our plan was working, and I sure hope it would. Our Titans were counting on us. A few hours later, I came back to check on our traps. Good news! It seems the ants had discovered our bait! Yes, the plan was working. Not a lot of ants yet, but it was just the start. Not many eating the chocolate yet, but it was ok. It was only a matter of time before the ants would come biting down! Let's come back later. Returning to the traps, I was anxious to see if the ants had come swarming! Let's check it out! Yes, tonnes of ants! Look at them seething! In addition, ants were now tasting our choclate! Ants ran with full bellies back to the nest, but I wasn't going to remove the traps until it had at least 1 queen in it. My aim was to try to dispose of the queens as much as possible. And actually, here! I spotted a queen inside the first trap. She still had wings but it seemed one wing was missing. There was no way to tell if she was one of the fertilized egg-laying queens or if she was just a virgin alate, but it was good enough for me. Time for Phase Four: Removal! I blocked both entrances to the first trap and removed it from site. Here you go, Pharaoh ants! How about some chocolate. It tastes out of this world! Sliding the chocolate over, I placed a fresh new trap with another freshly killed cockroach inside. I knew it wouldn't be long before the ants would come discovering this roach, too and start swarming inside the new trap. Let's come back later and see. Let's check our traps, AC Family! Ants eating the chocolate, and yes ants also eating our roach. So now we knew the system worked! I plugged up our chocolate trap and slid over the roach trap, and in its place, a new trap, this time with some cut up superworms. I wanted to change up the bait because I didn't want the ants to get bored of our bait choices. I found the ants would send more workers out on site if the food was new. I just loved how our plan was working! So I continued this trap removal and intallation method over the next couple of days until I was able to remove a significant number of ants. Now AC Family, get this. I happened to make two very interesting discoveries during this trapping process. First, I found when the ants were eating protein bait, insects and such, the trails to and from the bait were fairly uniform and orderly. But as soon as the ants were eating chocolate, the trails were berzerk! Ants broke off the trails and some formed sub trails, while others just seemed to generally be lost. It was as if the ants were drunk! Haha! Look. Interesting right? Perhaps we can study this in a future video! The second discovery I made, was downstairs. So my ant room is on my second floor, but down in my kitchen towards the door leading to my balcony, I happened to spot an ant trail of pharaoh ants. Another pharaoh colony?! The trail extended onto my kitchen floor. I had to find out where these pharaoh ants were coming from? I followed the trail up and found the ants were emerging from a space in my balcony door frame leading outside. On the other end of this trail, the ants traveled along the foot of my counter and then somewhere inside it. And that's when it hit me! This wasn't another colony. It was the same colony. AC Family, this pharaoh ant trail went all the way from my balcony door, into my counter, and from there somehow into my walls, and all the way up to the second floor and emerging into my ant room. Can you believe it?! Can you imagine how much distance these ants were traveling relative to their size, just to get the food! That is quite the distance! And what blew my mind even more was that, this could also mean this pharaoh ant colony could possibly be bigger than any of us ever imagined! I live high up on the 15th floor but I bet this pharaoh ant trail was actually stories long, extending into other condo units of my building on multiple floors. Like an invisible giant entity, this pharaoh ant colony was extending its silent tendrils into all areas of my building, moving at will floor by floor, collecting food along the way to grow its colony bigger and bigger. Who knows? With multiple queens constantly giving rise to tireless workers, this colony could in fact be absolutely massive, simultaneously reaching into many of the buildings and homes in my neighbourhood. The implications were endless and just mind-boggling! These pharaoh ants were indeed the true definition of a supercolony! After all our trapping, believe it or not, AC Family, it eventually got to the point where no more pharaoh ants were seen. And so began phase five: Precautionary Maintenance. With vinegar, I wiped down all the areas where the pharaoh ants were trailing. I did this several times in order to break down the ants' chemical trails. I also fortified the baby powder barrier in the Garden of Eden. As for any pharaoh ants remaining inside the Garden of Eden, I made sure to lay down some bait and remove them from site once they came swarming. And as of this morning AC Family, I am happy to announce, that the pharaoh ants that once threatened our Titans, were no longer around to cause trouble! I placed a cockroach into the Garden of Eden this morning, and it filled my heart with joy to watch as our Titans came swarming in to claim their rightful meal. It was hilarious to see some black crazy ants, also rushing in trying to get to the roach, but our Titans, being the alphas were not having it! Check out how they kept all the black crazy ants at bay! Now, AC Family, are you ready for the surprise? As for the pharaoh ants, some of you may be wondering what I did with all the pharaoh ants caught in our traps. Did I kill them? Well, in last week's video, so many of you expressed how much you wanted me to capture the pharaoh ants and place them in their own setup, to become another ant colony to join our growing family of ant colonies within our ant room. And so, your wish, was my command. Phase Six: Captivity. Turns out, I coverted all the traps into miniature terrariums, using soils borrowed from our Garden of Eden so they contained all the springtails and microorganisms needed to break down waste, and connected them all together via tubing. And when I say, tubing, I mean tubing! These ants love to travel? Well, I made sure they had all the traveling space they needed, and what's ironic is that parts of their new home consisted of our Titan's old towers. I cannot wait to give you an official tour of their setup, AC Family, in a future video! After this entire ordeal, with our ants all safe for now, and a new ant colony to join our family, I am truly relieved and excited for what's next. It seems these pharaoh ants which the world has learned to loathe can be controlled, without the use of harmful pesticides. It just required an understanding of how these ants behave and live. It seems although they are called Pharaoh ants, they were still actually slaves to their own biology. Thank you for watching, AC Family, and until next week, it's ant love forever! Alright, AC Family isn't this just incredible?! We managed to successfully control our pharaoh ant problem plus acquire a new ant colony in the process. Oh, and this new Pharaoh ant colony needs a name! Please take the time to vote here, for an official name for our pharaoh ants. My top 5 picks of names suggested by you, the AC Family, in last week's video. If you found this video entertaining and informative it would mean a lot to me if you could hit the LIKE button, share this video with your friends, and leave me a comment. Oh yeah, and if you're not subscribed yet, hit that subscribe button and slap that bell icon to keep updated on our weekly ant videos. AC Inner Colony, I've left a hidden cookie for you hear, if you would just like to watch some extended play footage of our Titans enjoying their meal this morning while warding off their black crazy ant neighbours! And now it's time for the AC Question of the week! In last week's video we asked: Name one thing black crazy ants and pharaoh ants have in common? Congratulations to Arda Mudarso who correctly answered: They are both polygynous, meaning they have more than one queen. Congratulations Arda, you just won a free ant t-shirt from our shop! In this week's AC Question of the Week, we ask: List any one of the phases of our ant trapping process in this video! Leave your answer in the comments section and you could win a free ebook handbook from our shop! Hope you can subscribe to the channel as we upload every Saturday at 8AM EST. Please remember to LIKE, COMMENT, SHARE, & SUBSCRIBE if you enjoyed this video to help us keep making more. It's ant love forever!
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Channel: AntsCanada
Views: 1,571,952
Rating: 4.9330764 out of 5
Keywords: ants, antscanada, mikey bustos, myrmecology, antfarm, ant colony, ant nest, queen ant, formicarium, antstore, ant habitat, antworks, insects, science, pets, exotic, pharaoh ants, monomorium pharaonis, pest, trap, natural pesticide, eco-friendly, safe, pesticide-free, conservation, humane, diatomaceous earth, chalk, carebara diversa, marauder ants
Id: X_BV_PLtniU
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 21min 27sec (1287 seconds)
Published: Sat Nov 25 2017
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