Mediterranean carpenter ant
Camponotus barbaricus
Temperature
24–28 °C
Humidity
50–70 %
Hibernation
Late November – February
Where it comes from
- Range
- The Iberian Peninsula and North Africa, in dry open country
- Size
- Workers 6–14 mm, queen 15–18 mm
- Queens
- One queen
Keeping them
- Diet
- Sugar water and insects
- Founding
- Fully claustral — the queen needs no food until her first workers
- Brood development
- Egg to worker in roughly 7–9 weeks at 26 °C
- Nest
- Warm and mostly dry, with one damp corner and a heated end
- Wintering
- About 15 °C — a mild Mediterranean winter, not a cold one
Big, black and covered in golden hairs that catch the light. It forages at dusk, so an evening check shows more than a daytime one.
Check it yourself
General guidance from the usual beginner references — treat it as a starting point, not as a rule your colony has agreed to.