Yellow meadow ant
Lasius flavus
Temperature
20–24 °C
Humidity
60–80 %
Hibernation
November – February
Where it comes from
- Range
- Europe and across the Palaearctic, in grassland and meadows
- Size
- Workers 2–4 mm, queen 7–9 mm
- Queens
- One queen; founding queens often share a chamber at first
Keeping them
- Diet
- Sugar water and small insects
- Founding
- Fully claustral — the queen needs no food until her first workers
- Brood development
- Egg to worker in roughly 8–10 weeks at 23 °C
- Nest
- A dark, damp nest — cover it, because they hate the light
- Wintering
- 5–10 °C
Lives underground and rarely forages in the open, so expect a quiet colony that wants a dark, damp nest more than a busy outworld.
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.