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

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