Black garden ant
Lasius niger
Temperature
21–25 °C
Humidity
50–70 %
Hibernation
November – February
Where it comes from
- Range
- Across Europe and much of the Palaearctic
- Size
- Workers 3–5 mm, queen 8–9 mm
- Queens
- One queen; several may found together and all but one are killed
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 6–8 weeks at 24 °C
- Nest
- Ytong, plaster or acrylic with one damp end and one dry end
- Wintering
- 5–10 °C — a cellar, an unheated room or the salad drawer
The classic first colony: forgiving about humidity, quick to grow and happy to eat almost anything you offer.
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.