Hey, what’s going on here? Wow! Tonnes of fire ants above ground? They’re everywhere! Something’s happening, guys and I’m not
quite sure what it is…. Please SUBSCRIBE to my channel and hit the
BELL icon! Welcome to the AC Family! Enjoy! Could the fire ants be planning an escape? Could the ants be swarming because of food? At first I couldn’t figure out what was
causing these rave parties that my pet fire ants, the Phoenix Empire here, were throwing
every now and then within their setup, but guys, after some careful investigation and
snooping around, I finally found the answer and it wasn’t what I was thinking! Keep on watching until the end to discover
the reason for these ant raves, and meanwhile let’s see if you can figure it out before
the answer is revealed! Leave any guesses you might have in the comments,
then come back to your guess to let us know if you were correct! No cheating! Now, if you’re new, welcome to the City
of Ashes, our ever-expanding ant farm setup of the Phoenix Empire. Now, when I first saw this raving, it reminded
me of similar behaviour I saw in a past fire ant colony I had, the Fire Nation, where at
one moment the mothernest looked like this, and another moment the nest looked like this! They even held these massive floating raves
on water! It was an incredible sight, but at the time,
it was a mystery to me as to why the ants did this. I just ended up calling them ant raves, as
it looked like the ants were having a giant scheduled party! Of course, not to be confused with the huge
festivities that take place when fire ants have nuptial flights every year during breeding
season, which is a totally different thing, and surely our Phoenix Empire here was much
too young a colony with no reproductive alates yet to be holding nuptial flights this soon. It had to be something else that was causing
these raves, and I was determined to find out! Eventually these raves died down, but I suspected
the cause of the partying was that the ants were finally moving into our new Hybrid Nest
Mini ant farm that we introduced to them a couple weeks ago. Could that be the reason they’re raving? Peeking into the nest, I was surprised to
see that the ants still hadn’t moved in after two weeks. They had moved in more dirt and even springtails
had moved in, but overall the fire ants had decided to simply treat this ant farm space
like a highway leading into their hunting grounds. No worries. Sometimes moving into new nests takes time. But speaking of the hunting grounds, let’s
look into Hell’s Kitchen, shall we? Wow! Have they remodelled the landscape or what?! The place was completely devoid now of basil
plants as they’ve dug them all up from the roots, leaving them no chance of survival. The hunting grounds were also now littered
with dead cockroaches. And oh my, AC Family! Look at that! That is one massive supermajor! The colony is so big now the degree of specialization
and formation of castes is much more pronounced. Supermajors like these are born with huge
heads which are packed with muscle and help the colony with defense, or as seen here,
with tearing into hard to rip materials, like this roach exoskeleton. Imagine having jaws of life attached to your
face! The colony now has hundreds of these supermajors,
and it’s so amazing to see the size difference compared to the other workers! Now some of you may have guessed the fire
ant raves were being caused by food. I mean, isn’t food a great reason for a
colony to come swarming? Well, yes but it wasn’t food, because the
raves would happen even when I didn’t give food, plus if you look back on some of the
rave footage, some of the ant ravers aren’t exactly paying attention to the food. It had to be something else. And, I eventually discovered what that something
else was, by pure accident, as I was trying to figure out something completely different
that was also puzzling me, and that’s this: the colony was eating a lot, we now had tonnes
of huge supermajors, plus I noticed that the colony was drinking so much water and sugar
water now, and all these were sure signs that the Phoenix Empire was a huge ant colony! But the fact that they hadn’t yet expanded
into our new Hybrid Nest, made me wonder where were they expanding to? Surely, they weren’t all crammed into the
Fire Fortress were they? If so, this ac Ant Tower of theirs must be
packed with babies at this point! I removed the red film to look inside. Wow! So many brood rooms! Have a look! Our Phoenix Empire’s nest is so beautiful! OK, but though there were a lot of brood here,
it still seemed that for a colony as big as our Phoenix Empire, the ants were still stashing
the majority of the brood away somewhere else! A colony this size has so much more brood
than we see here in their Fire Fortress! So where was the majority of the colony hiding
now? Little did I know, the answer to that lead
me to ultimately discover the reason my fire ants were randomly raving! Looking back at the highway in the Hybrid
Nest, I noticed that some ants were bringing brood into Hell’s Kitchen! We did see in a past video that the ants were
treating this wood hollow in Hell’s Kitchen as a satellite nest. Could the majority of the colony be living
in this wood? It’s not very much space, I thought to myself. But then I noticed a sort of mound below the
wood, and it made me wonder if our Phoenix Empire was somewhere down there hiding all
their brood away from our view. What do you guys think? It looks like there’s quite a bit of activity
going on here right? Well, there’s only one way to find out if
there’s a nest here! I took some water and poured just a little
over the mound, not enough to drown the ants, which is practically impossibly by the way,
but if the ants were just living in the wood, this would not be enough to incite a response
in the fire ants, however if the ants did have tunnels and chambers full of brood down
there, we’d see a mass response from the ants. I sat and watched to see if we’d see anything. At the surface the ants seemed to very slowly
escalate into a hi-jinx, and sure enough the mood escalated into a full-out mobilization
response! I looked to the ant highway in the Hybrid
Nest and saw that some of the workers were carrying brood towards the Fire Fortress. Many ants were also rushing in from the Fire
Fortress to help at Hell’s Kitchen. In Hell’s Kitchen, I saw ants were moving
brood in and out of the wood hollow, which to me meant that yes, there must have truly
been some underground brood chambers below the wood and the ants were rushing to relocate
the brood in response to that little bit of water. I also noticed ants were moving brood to and
from the neighbouring wood, which meant they probably had a satellite nest there, too! How interesting! And as I followed the excited trail of ants
back to the Fire Fortress, where I assumed most of the brood was being relocated, that’s
when I saw it! Ah-ha! Ant rave back at home! So AC Family, that’s when the answer came
to me. These ant raves were not parties at all! They were part of a rain response, and looking
back at every time these fire ant raves happened, they didn’t just randomly happen. I realized, they happened whenever it rained,
and in the Phoenix Empire’s case, whenever I randomly decided to moisten the hunting
grounds. Let me explain! Fire ants, like all ants, have a rain response
where at the first sign of rain the ants quickly mobilize to bring the young to a higher, drier,
deeper, or flood-free area. Perhaps, due to the fact that the ants have
completely cloaked the tubes with gravel, I didn’t notice the transportation of brood
during these mysterious raves, but yes, thinking back, the fire ant raves happened every time
I watered Hell’s Kitchen. Why they come boiling up to the surface though,
is still beyond me, but perhaps it’s so that the majority of the ants are outside
of the nest in case they need to quickly form a living raft in response to flooding, which
is totally a fire ant thing, if you’ve ever seen one, and a vital survival technique in
the rain-prone areas of the world they’re from. And in case you were wondering why the ants
didn’t seem to be in sync with where they were relocating the brood, well, ants sometimes
take a while to completely agree where the best place to stash the brood actually is
at critical times like this. Eventually, though, they all get on the same
page. But at least we now had our answer! One thing I noticed was that some of the ants
at the wood hollow had transported batches of eggs, which to me meant that the queen
of the colony, the Ember Empress was hiding out somewhere here in Hell’s Kitchen! For now, it seems the fire ants prefer to
occupy tunnels they’ve dug out themselves in their Fire Fortress and in areas of Hell’s
Kitchen, but eventually, our Phoenix Empire will grow so big, Hell’s Kitchen and the
Fire Fortress will no longer be enough space for them, and they’ll finally move some
of the colony into the Hybrid Nest. I personally can’t wait to see it completely
packed with fire ants, and crossing fingers, hopefully see the queen again! Once, again, I appreciate you all watching
and solving this ant rave mystery with me. Did you guess correctly? I will surely continue to update you guys
on our Phoenix Empire’s winding and exciting journey of growth and evolution into the great
colony they’re destined to become, but until then, thank you for watching and supporting
the ants! It’s ant love forever! AC Family, did you enjoy today’s episode? Next week, I have a cool invention that I
think you guys will love that I plan on installing into the Phoenix Empire’s setup! All in next week’s video, so if you haven’t
yet, do SMASH that SUBSCRIBE button and BELL ICON now, and hit ALL so you get notified
at every upload. Also don’t forget to hit the LIKE button
every single time including now. It would really mean a lot to me, guys. Thank you! AC Inner Colony, I have left a hidden cookie
for you here, if you would like to watch the entire Phoenix Empire rain response all to
the sounds of relaxing music and thunderstorm ambiance. It’s super relaxing and satisfying! And guys, did you know that it’s anting
season in the Northern Hemisphere, and you don’t even need to leave your home to start
an ant colony?! You can catch pregnant queen ants from the
safety of your own backyard, balcony, or open window starting this month! Be sure to visit AntsCanada.com for all your
ant keeping and collecting gear shipped to you in a special package from our ant-loving
facility in the USA, so you can get the most out of your ant keeping experience. We ship worldwide and also offer full email
support if you need our help! Visit AntsCanada.com today. And now it’s time for the AC Question of
the Week. Last week, we asked: Name one condition that needs to be met
in order to decrease the chances of cannibalism in our spiders. Congratulations to Anthony Watson who answered: The spiderlings needed to be well-fed! Congratulations Anothony, you just won a free
Ultimate Ant Keeping handbook from our shop! In this week’s AC Question of the Week we
ask: What are supermajors for? Leave your answer in the comments section
and you could also win a free ebook handbook from our shop! Hope you could subscribe to the channel as
we upload every Saturday at 8AM EST. Please remember to LIKE, COMMENT, SHARE, and
SUBSCRIBE if you enjoyed this video, to help us keep making more. It’s ant love forever!
