European harvester ant
Messor structor
Temperature
24–28 °C
Humidity
40–60 %
Hibernation
November – February
Where it comes from
- Range
- Southern and central Europe eastwards into central Asia
- Size
- Workers 4–9 mm, queen 10–12 mm
- Queens
- One queen
Keeping them
- Diet
- Seeds, with insects for the brood
- Founding
- Fully claustral — the queen needs no food until her first workers
- Brood development
- Egg to worker in roughly 6–8 weeks at 26 °C
- Nest
- Dry nest with a dry seed chamber and a small damp corner for water
- Wintering
- 10–15 °C
Smaller and hardier than Messor barbarus, and it takes a cooler room. Worth knowing: much of what Europe sells under this name turns out to be Messor ibericus, whose queens clone M. structor males to produce their hybrid workers — so the label on the tube may not be the ant in it.
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.