Ant Colony

Ant Colony
(Building)
Location
	Compound
Size
	5 x 3
Requirements
	Myrmecology; Entomology ;
Cost to Build
Clay	100
Dirt	100
Iron Bars	4
Red Sand	100
Sand	100
Sheet Glass	4
Thermometer	1
Nontoxic, Termite Resistant Boards	75
White Sand	100

Overview

An Ant Colony is used to raise ants. After seeding the colony with a Queen Ant, the colony will grow and produce Mandibular Glue and eventually another Queen Ant.

Considerations

Ants are a fairly difficult livestock to feed. Their preferred food is a Fresh Leaf that changes every 2 days. New to T11, though, Ant Food may be readily produced in a Fungus Farm by making the compost wrong for the mushrooms you try to cultivate.

The mechanics of ants penalize missing a single feeding fairly highly, and the difficulty of obtaining replacement queen ants can be considerable, so be sure you are well-prepared to feed Ant Colonies you build before you construct and seed them.

Cost

100 Clay ?
100 Dirt ?
4 Iron Bars ?
100 Red Sand ?
100 Sand ?
4 Sheet Glass ?
1 Thermometer ?
75 Treated Boards - Nontoxic, Termite Resistant ?
100 White Sand ?

Queen Ants

After being built, the colony must first be seeded with a Queen Ant. If the colony currently has a live queen, you will be able to see the ants moving.

Queen ants can be obtained either :

By examining the current plant of the week that holds fresh leaves (using the hotkey 'E' will also work). When you examine a plant that is the current source of fresh leaves, a message in main will state that ants are currently fond of this.
As a byproduct of another ant colony.
One queen ant is given upon successful completion of Dinergates and Ergates task.

Care and Feeding

Ants eat up to 21 Fresh Leaves. Older leaves, even those from the previous week, are not suitable. If there are sufficient leaves in the tank when the week changes, these leaves will vanish and the colony's health will increase.

On some weeks, the Fresh Leaves may be difficult to very difficult to find! If you are not out and about early after the week change in a bad leaf week, it may take hours of searching to find enough leaves to feed a tank. Be aware of the potential difficult in feeding ants! Some weeks will be Green Ground Cover. Some weeks will be Blue Pumilla Grass, or worse, and there is no way to predict them in advance.

A colony's health changes at the end of each week depending on how many fresh leaves are present.

Whenever a colony has 21 leaves at week change, its health increases by 3. This will happen every teppy week (~2 1/2 days) to a maximum of 21.
If the colony has less than 21 leaves, its health will drop to half its current health rounded down. For example, a colony at 15 health will drop to 7 health. A colony at 2 health will drop to 1 health.
A colony at 1 health will drop to 0 and the ants will die unless the full 21 leaves are added.
If a colony has no leaves and its health is zero, the queen dies and the colony must be reseeded.
If the colony reaches 21 health, a second queen is produced and the colony health is reduced back to 1.

Ant Food

Ant Food was a present during the Holiday Snowstorms 2019 (and 2016)
Adding Ant Food to a tank gives the option to add 21
Ant Food is a generic equivalent to Fresh Leaves
Ant Food may be added to a tank the same way as Fresh Leaves.
Ant Food may be harvested from Fungus Farms that have fungus growing, but cannot be harvested during the window the Fungus Farms are actively fruiting. The longer the fungus has been growing before being harvested, the more Ant Food you will obtain.

Mandibular Glue

Mandibular Glue is produced based on the new health of the colony. Colonies with high health produce more glue than colonies with low health.

If you want to max out glue production, only feed your colony if the health is less than 18. This will keep the health as high as possible without producing a new queen and resetting the colony to 1 health.

At 9 health my ants produced 2 Mandibular Glue.

It appears that Mandibular Glue does not have to be removed, but can be stored as would Cobra Skin or Crushed Eggshells are, that is, within the tank. 18/4/2009 Diania

Leaf History

There is a wiki page available that shows the types of plants needed for Fresh Leaves each week.
Calendar for the leaf and thistle voids change and the current week number: http://sharpnetwork.net/atitd/calendar.asp

Production

With placing 21 leaves in the colony weekly, and removing any glue accumulated:

Week	Health of colony (out of 21)	Glue produced (that week only)	Notes
1	0	0	Newly seeded colony
2	3	0
3	6	0
4	9	2
5	12	4
6	15	7
7	18	14
8	1	0	Second queen produced
9	4	0
10	7	0
11	10	3
12	13	5
13	16	9
14	19	16
15	1	0	Second queen produced