European red mountain ant
Manica rubida
Temperature
20–24 °C
Humidity
50–70 %
Hibernation
October – March
Where it comes from
- Range
- Central and southern Europe, the Near East and Georgia, at 400–2,200 m
- Size
- Workers 5–9 mm, queen 9.5–13 mm
- Queens
- Often several queens
Keeping them
- Diet
- Insects and sugar water
- Founding
- Fully claustral — the queen needs no food until her first workers
- Brood development
- Egg to worker in roughly 7–9 weeks at 22 °C
- Nest
- A clear moisture gradient: one damp end, one dry end, and depth to dig
- Wintering
- 5–8 °C
The largest stinging ant you can easily keep in Europe, and the sting is genuinely painful. It stays a small colony, so the attraction is the individual ant, not the numbers.
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.