Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Does anyone know what is going on with ants alive? It has been taking 10-14 days for them to get here. They don't answer their phone or emails.

I can't speak for them, but I can tell you with this draught it's been difficult for me to fill orders. We just got about an inch of rain this week so things should get better now.
Collecting a lot of ants is not easy task sometimes.
Cheers!
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Phrynosoma.Com

i ordered some ants a little over a week ago from ants alive, and it took them 5 days to get to me. i dont know why theyd be taking longer to get yours. i ordered 500 so maybe if you ordered 1000 itll take longer

What I was trying to say is I ship ants to folks too, and they are hard to collect when the desert is very dry.
It's always best to order them a week before you are going to need them. I try to send fresh ants, and this can be difficult when you don't know how many you are going to need to ship.
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Phrynosoma.Com

last week my 500 ants came pretty quick - the order before it took 16 days to get them. And yes they do not answer their phone all the time. About 4 months ago I called them and the lady just took the phone off the hook and laid it down - I could hear her having a conversation in the background = she didn't even say "please hold" and basically tried calling back but phone was off the hook for the rest of the day.

so you cant breed ants or anything?? do they have to be caught? that must be hard. im suprised it doesnt take them longer if thats the case.

Yes, you can cultivate harvester ants, but it is very difficult, from what I have studied, to get a captive queen to produce sufficient numbers in a less than ideal environment. And the queen can be pretty picky about conditions.

I have captured 8 queens in the last couple of months, in an attempt to maintain my own colonies for my personal use and mail order as well. But have since decided that this is an unnecessary effort, due to the fact that I have hundreds of colonies available to collect from. I can go outside of town and literally walk 20 yards in any direction, and find a colony.

The problem with Antsalive is most likely that they have virtually no well established competition yet. They are the ones most horned lizard owners know of, or discover first, to supply them with mail order ants. They have many customers, no doubt. But this means they must put a strain on any colony locations they frequently use, or travel farther and farther out in search of new colonies to "strip mine". With the recent high heat conditions and drought in much of the southwest, this takes an additional toll on harvester ant "production". The queens probably just can't keep up under the weather conditions and the demand for worker ant collection.

I have several locations that I know have good consistent producing colonies, and some that have not been so good. But I try to rotate the collection to give the colonies a break. I can always go a short distance and find a colony in better shape to fill an order. But Antsalive I'm sure has a harder time finding well rested colonies that are close to them. They probably take what they can find to get the orders out. The downside to them having too many customers, is that they cannot "make" more product.
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"A man that should call everything by it's right name, would hardly pass the streets without being knocked down as a common enemy." The Complete Works of George Savile, First Marquess of Halifax 1912,246