Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Ants and DIY Ant Farm




Ants are insects known for their diligence and preparedness. Many children's stories depict ants as reliable and industrious insects as opposed to grasshoppers. Ants are even commended in the Bible. Proverbs 6:6 reads, "Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise!"

Ants are not just the perfect exemplar of hard work but they also make interesting and inexpensive pets. If your kids wish to make ants as pets, you need to build an ant farm first. Making an ant farm is a thrilling and entertaining means of learning crucial things about ecology and entomology. Ants teach kids their important role in ecological balance.

How to Make an Ant Farm
Materials:
o Small aquarium or glass container with cap
o Smaller glass container to fit inside the bigger one (1 inch distance)
o garden soil
o funnel
o scotch tape
o construction paper
o pail and shovel
o honey
o cotton ball
o ants (If possible, hunt for big black ants because smaller types of ants are hard to view)

Directions:
Put the smaller container inside the bigger container. The smaller glass container will consume space and allow the ants to put together tunnels touching the outside container so they can be easily seen.

Hunt for an ant farm. Using a garden shovel, burrow with care in the portions where there are many ants. Move soft soil bearing the ants into a pail. Make some effort to hunt for a winged queen ant or some bigger ants together with maggots. Queen ants are generally black and possess a bigger abdomen and thorax. Worker ants will become extinct without the queen. Look beneath stones and logs. Queens are normally making new ant colonies in spring seasons. It is the best time to hunt for a queen.

By means of a funnel, put in soil along with the tinier worker ants to the gap flanked by two containers. Then, put in tenderly the queen ant and eggs last. Typically, the tinier ants will become busy and start to transfer their queen ant together with her eggs in their new dwelling place immediately. Refrain from moving the container as this could drop the dirt in the tunnels of the ants.

There are certain types of ant species that bite. Red ants are particularly aggressive and their bites can hurt kids. Black ants are passive types. Have kids stay away from ants while you build the ant farm. Ants can scale glasses. Make sure to firmly cover your bottle or container. Create tiny air holes in the cover so that ants cannot get away. Put together a paper sheath to shield the bottle from top to bottom of the soil. This will dim the ant farm and will make ants feel that they are home to an underground setting.

Ants are crazy over sugar, tiny bread morsels, fruit pieces, and what else, honey! Put only extremely small quantities. These creatures obtain fluid mostly from their food, yet every two days you can place a water-soaked cotton ball into the container to supplement the reserve. Do this carefully because thumping or knocking the container over will break up your new ant farm.