Silky field ant
Formica fusca
Temperature
22–26 °C
Humidity
50–70 %
Hibernation
October – March
Where it comes from
- Range
- Europe and northern Asia, in open woodland and clearings
- Size
- Workers 4–7 mm, queen 8–10 mm
- Queens
- Usually 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 5–7 weeks at 25 °C
- Nest
- Ytong or plaster with a damp corner and a large outworld to run in
- Wintering
- 5–10 °C, and they want the full length of it
Fast, skittish foragers that scatter when the nest is opened. They want a long, genuinely cold winter.
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.