Red ant
Myrmica ruginodis
Temperature
20–24 °C
Humidity
60–80 %
Hibernation
October – March
Where it comes from
- Range
- Northern Palaearctic, from western Europe to Japan, in woodland and moorland
- Size
- Workers 4–6 mm, queen 5–7 mm
- Queens
- Strongly polygynous — ten or twenty queens is ordinary
Keeping them
- Diet
- Insects, some sugar water
- Founding
- Semi-claustral — the queen forages and must be fed while founding
- Brood development
- Egg to worker in roughly 8–10 weeks at 22 °C; late brood overwinters as larvae
- Nest
- Damp and cool, under bark or moss for preference
- Wintering
- 5–10 °C
The cooler, damper cousin of Myrmica rubra, at home high up and far north. Larvae that do not finish before winter simply stop and resume in spring, so a quiet nest in autumn is not a problem.
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.