Myrmecocystus romainei

The honeypots are the great curiosity of the ant hobby, and romainei is one of the day-active ones, so you actually see the foraging rather than guessing at it after dark. Workers carry sweet liquid back to the nest, where specialised repletes swell with it and hang from the ceiling as a living food store the colony draws on through dry spells. It is a southwestern desert ant, which means a warm dry setup and a feeding routine built around nectar and sugar. Comfortable for a keeper who has handled heat gradients once before, and endlessly watchable thanks to that replete caste.

A nectar specialist. Foragers gather sugars and pass them to repletes, who hang from the ceiling as living storage jars and dole the liquid back out in lean spells. The brood still needs insect protein to grow.

★★★ readily · ★★ moderately · ★ occasionally · ✗ not eaten

Found the queen in a test tube, then move her to a small acrylic or aerated-concrete nest once the first nanitics cover the floor. As a honeypot ant she fills repletes with nectar that hang from the ceiling, so pick a nest with headroom and a deep, dry chamber rather than a damp one. Keep the arena warm and parched, and ring the rim with fluon (PTFE), oil, or talc and water since workers test every edge. An ANTonTOP formicarium or starter kit pairs that dry desert nest with arena and barrier in one set.

Sun-baked desert ground is the model here: hold the nest itself at 24-28 °C and let the arena run hotter at 26-32 °C. Keep the nest fairly dry at 35-50% humidity and the arena drier still at 20-40%. Warm a single end so the colony can shuttle to the temperature it wants. No winter rest is needed here, so this one stays active and feeding right through the year.

Founding is unhurried while the queen raises her first brood alone, then the pace lifts as the worker force builds and more repletes come online. Given time a colony can reach around 10,000 workers. Your colony arrives as a queen with workers and brood already underway.

• Repletes, the swollen living-larder workers, hang motionless from the nest roof and can balloon to the size of a small grape with stored liquid.
• Myrmecocystus is a strictly New World genus tied to the arid west of North America, where summer-baked soils make stored liquid a real survival edge.
• Day-foraging species like this partition their working hours by temperature, slipping out when the ground is warm but not lethal so they sidestep both rivals and the worst desert heat.
• Honeypot repletes were dug up and eaten as a sweet treat by several Indigenous peoples of the American Southwest and Australia.

Is Myrmecocystus romainei good for beginners?

It is Intermediate, so it suits a keeper who has already raised one easy colony and understands heat gradients and arid setups.

Does this Californian honeypot need a winter rest?

No. Hibernation is not required, so keep it active and feeding all year.

Does Myrmecocystus romainei sting or bite?

No. It only bites mildly and has no sting.

How many workers can a romainei colony reach?

Up to 10,000 workers in a mature colony.

How big is the queen and how big are the workers?

The queen is 10-12 mm, with workers at 4-8 mm.

How fast does it grow?

Steady; the colony builds slowly during founding and faster once the worker force takes off.

What does it eat?

Mainly sugar water and nectar or jelly, plus crickets and flies for protein. Repletes store surplus sugar.

Will it arrive alive?

Yes. We send a queen with workers and brood, add a seasonal heat or cool pack, and dispatch within 24 h with tracking.

Escape prevention. Coat the inner rim of every open arena with fluon (PTFE), or use talc-and-water or an oil barrier as a backup, and keep a tight, fine-mesh lid on top. Check the barrier regularly, since dust, condensation and feeding debris break a fluon line over time. Keep tubing connectors tight and seal any gaps in the nest.

Keeping reminders. Always offer fresh water and never let the nest dry out completely. Give carbohydrates continuously and protein a few times a week, and remove uneaten insect prey within 24 hours before it moulds. Keep the formicarium out of direct sunlight and away from constant vibration, which stresses a young colony. A water-filled test tube plugged with cotton makes an ideal spare incubator whenever you need one.

Before you buy – do not rehouse too early. Have a test-tube setup or a small formicarium with an outworld and a working barrier ready before your colony arrives. A founding colony grows slowly at first, which is normal. Moving a small colony into a large nest too soon invites mould, mites and stress, and the workers die off one by one. Keep the colony in its open test tube on the arena, plug the nest entrance with cotton, and open up the next chambers only once the colony fills roughly 10-15% of the space.

What we ship. Every colony ships with a live-arrival guarantee, backed by our 24h unboxing-video guarantee: if the queen does not arrive alive, we reship free. Parcels travel with DHL, InPost (PL) or EMS, with a heat or cold pack to suit the season, packed discreetly and securely. We ship across the EU and worldwide, with free shipping over the Europe threshold.