24 Hour delivery included in price for the UK.
Oecophylla smaragdina are truly some of the most interesting and visually pleasing ants around. Just look at the amazing visuals of their queen and workers. They are classed as true wavers since they exclusively in the wild weave their nest with their brood in trees and Queens actively form colonies in the trees.
Once a queen’s brood comes through, she will actively weave a leaf to form the first part of the nest. Both workers and queens have the most amazing grip which is evolutionary adaptation to leaving on trees where having a strong grip is essential along with their colourations that allow them to blend with the leaves.
They were used for thousands of years by farmers as biological control agent they are aggressive species and will actively hunt prey and usually work in groups and pin down prey and take back to the nest, they are also capable of spraying formica acid.
Once a nest is set up once colony is established good escape prevention is needed.
It can be a challenge to get this species started but lucky for you guys we have created a caresheet for this species which is on our caresheet page antsrus/caresheets it also has information about nests for this species and general care.
https://www.antsrus.com/caresheets
Keeping difficulty: Medium (kept at least 1 or 2 exotic ant species)
Colony form: Polygyne
Queen size: 20-22mm yellow/green with bulky thorax
Worker’s size: 8-12mm head and gaster green to greenish brown
Food: honey water and insects
Temp: 24-28°C
Humidity: 30-50%
Founding: clasutral without feeding
Colony size: 1-200000 workers
Hibernation: No (They would benefit from 6-week diapause from October to March)
Live arrival guarantee:
We guarantee the live arrival of your Queen they come well packed in our jiffy bags which have two-sided padding as well as an additional layer of bubble wrap around our test tubes. We are the only company in the United Kingdom to offer our live arrival guarantee of your queen as well as an additional 14 days guarantee if the colony if kept in the original test tube for all our European species. Why do we do this? We are confident with our colony’s health and our packaging process as well as our care guides, we also believe in our customers and making sure they have a good ant keeping experience.
Live arrival guarantee we ensure the live arrival of the queen only upon delivery contact us within 24 hours of receiving the Queen dead on arrival with a picture of the dead queen and the original workers. DO NOT TRANSFER THE DEAD QUEEN OR WORKERS TO A NEST AS THIS VOIDS YOUR WARRNTY. For our additional 14-day guarantee for European species the Queen and workers must be kept in the original test tube sealed with the cotton and care sheet instructions followed if you want to keep this additional guarantee do not transfer to a nest or your warranty is VOIDED (we recommend you keep the 14-day warranty).
We have no control over the environment outside the test tube and have no influence in the conditions the responsibility once placed outside the test tube within the 14-day period the responsibility is with the buyer. 9 times out of 10 colonies die in the nest due to lack of water access, food, temperature, oxygen or stress due to vibrations or exposure to excess light. If your colony does fail inside a nest contact us, we can advise what went wrong but it is up to you to buy another ant colony, you will succeed but sometimes it does not work the first time. Research is key to success with ant keeping and follow our guides.
