Messor Barbarus Queen Ant + Workers

*** We only ship live ants UK addresses with First Class Signed For delivery ***

Messor Barbarus, also known as the European Harvester ant, are commonly found in warmer areas on Europe, especially around Spain and Portugal. This species is ideal for a beginner ant keeper and are great to watch as they go about foraging for seeds. This species is not native to the UK.

The queen is generally 14-18mm in length, workers vary in length between 3mm and 13mm. This species also produce major workers, with huge heads and jaws. These majors use their jaws to remove the shell from larger seeds. These seeds, along with other seeds the workers collect, are then chewed up and turned into what's called 'ant bread'. This ant bread provides about 90% of the nutrition this species needs.

A Messor Barbarus queen is thought to live between 10-15 years, but in some cases up to 25 years.

Simply provide them with a temperature of between 22-27°C in the nest and a humidity of between 50-70% plus some additional protein, in addition to seeds, and they will be very happy.

When you buy your Messor barbarus queen from us, she will also come with some small Chai seeds. These small nutritious seeds are perfect for the first workers. Once larger workers and the major workers are prodcued, you can feed larger seeds. The seeds we send with the queen, and the others well sell on our site, are made for human consumption. This means extra processing has gone into making them, meaning they will be free from mites and other little bugs which might be present in other seeds.

As a protein source, you can feed them fruit flies, mealworms and other small insects. We always recommend feeding your colony dead insects. To make sure there are no harmful bacteria in the protein source, we recommend either quickly boiling the dead insects, or freeze them in the freezer. Your local pet store should stock mealworms and fruit flies, and these can be kept in the freezer for many months meaning they are not wasted.

Messor Barbarus should be hibernated during the winter months (late October to late March) as they would do in the wild. You can do this by keeping the ants at temperatures of between 10-15 degrees celsius. Don't let the temperature fall below 5 degrees as the ants could die.

Our queens with 'no workers' will have at least 1 egg.

Which Nest?

We would recommend one of our  'small' nest or a larger one for this species. This is because they like to store their seeds in a drier area, so our foundation nest may be too small to allow for this which si why we recommend our 'small' nests or larger. 

Live arrival guarantee

We care for the ants a great deal, so we don't just send them out in a jiffy bag with the test tube inside. Our queens, within their test tubes, are carefully placed within a cut-to-size piece of pipe insulation, and are then wrapped in bubble wrap. This is then placed in a strong mailing box. Our queens might be slightly more expensive than elsewhere because of this extra care, but you can be sure you are buying a strong queen and she will be packaged securely with a 'live arrival guarantee'. We have never had a queen die before arrival, but if she has somehow not survived the journey, please contact us and we will replace her, or refund you. We might ask for some evidence in the form of photos, or even ask for her to be shipped back to us at our expense to investigate what happened. The live arrival guarantee is only valid until arrival.

We will not send out ants on Fridays or Saturdays or in periods of extreme hot or cold weather. We don't want the queens sitting in any extremes of temperature in a van or sorting office longer than needed. Delivery is by '1st Class Signed For' post only, and please make sure that there will be someone around for delivery. The 'live arrival guarantee' is invalid if nobody is in to receive the ants and/or they are returned to the post or sorting office.

Non-native Species Warning

This species is not native to the UK, therefore it is illegal to release them into the wild. If you can no longer care for your ants, please contact us immediately.