QUEEN ANT FARMER PROJECT
Queen Ant Farmer Project
Frequently Asked Questions
In order to make any hobby sustainable, you need to supply it with some cash. Furthermore, you will be catching queen ants for yourself as well. We usually catch too many for ourselves. Instead of letting it die or let them kill each other, why not sell them and get some side income?
Anyone that is currently living in Malaysia. You don’t need to be a Malaysian to be a QAF as long as you are living in Malaysia.
Youngsters are encouraged to sign up because ant keeping is fun and very educational. You can make some pocket money out of this hobby as well by selling off your extra queen ants to us.
Please read the Privacy Policy terms in this google form and fill up the required information. Accepted applicants will receive a notification via email requesting mailing address information within 5 working days (not including public holiday).
You may read this article to learn how to catch queen ants.
Please contact us if you wish to learn more on catching, handling, packaging, and posting queen ants.
We will send 20 units of ø16x160mm plastic test tubes for free to your address once you’ve registered as a QAF. We will post 20 test tubes to you again after we receive 20 queen ants from you. Note that not all test tubes will be brand new. Some of the test tubes are used.
We will prepare the air waybill for you. You just need to pack the ants and print out the air waybill. Be sure to send us a video showing that all the ants are alive prior to packaging or just send us a packaging video. The package must be out for delivery within THREE (3) days after payment is done. Delay in delivery must be communicated prior to delivery due date. The following are the delivery options. You may arrange your own courier service but payment will be borne by you.
Pgeon Delivery:
Drop-off point: MBE, Parcel Hub, 99 Speed Mart
Pick-up service: Weekdays only (not including public holiday)
Pick-up time: Uncertain (between 9am-6pm)
DHL:
Drop-off point: Any DHL point
Pick-up service: N/A
Pick-up time: N/A
Tiers: Different species are ranked in different Tiers. You will be paid according to the tier of the queen ants.
MOQ: For each tier, there will be a minimum order quantity that we must take so that your effort will not go to waste. Note that we will only take queen ants from the tiers that we need, not from every tiers that you have.
Example: You caught 10 Camponotus queens which belong to Tier 2 (MOQ=5), we will take a minimum of 5 queens from you. If you happen to only have 2 Tier 2 queen ants, then we will take 2 as the MOQ.
Once the order is confirmed, identification verification and banking details are required. AntsDIY will make payment payable to the your bank account with the amount both parties agreed upon based on the tier list along with a purchase order receipt. We will transfer the money to you prior to the delivery.
50% deposit will be made payable as payment for Tier 4 and above queen ants. Complete payment will only be done if the queen ants are received alive.
You don’t need to provide us with any live-arrival-guaranteed policy. We will bear the risk of both infertile queen ants and the loss due to death-on-arrival. As for Tier 4 and above queen ants, both parties will share 50% of the lost. The paid deposit will not be returned to AntsDIY as payment for the effort to catch the queen ants.
However, you may include a live-arrival-guaranteed policy for the transaction if you wish to even out the disadvantage for AntsDIY.
Yes you will. There are two different types of ban:
1) Soft ban: If you accumulated THREE (3) violation points. Banned QAFs will have their farmer account terminated.
Types of violations:
– Mishandling of queen ants.
– Improper packaging of parcels.
– Late delivery after payment is done.
– Sending the wrong order.
2) Board of Scammers: If you are found to be taking advantage over the loopholes of the project terms, you will be required to justify your violations as such violations severed the trust we had on the QAF. Else, your name will be listed in the Board of Scammers by AntsDIY which will be displayed publicly to protect and create awareness for beginners in the ant keeping community. We aim to build an ant community that is trustworthy. Any act that causes distrust will not be tolerated.
Violations that deserve the Board of Scammers:
– Sending virgin gynes that emerged from one’s own mature colony.
– Sending dead queen ants on purpose.
– Did not send the queen ants over at all.
WARNING: Anyone who dare try slipping through the loopholes in the project T&C will earn a place in the Board of Scammers. Don’t challenge our knowledge on ants. Just by one sight we can know how long an ant had died.
Queen Ants Tier Pricing
Camponotus sp. (Tier 2)
Nylanderia sp.
Pheidole parva
Crematogaster sp.
Iridomyrmex bicknelli
Solenopsis geminata
Camponotus sp.
Polyrachis sp.
Carebara diversa
Odontomachus simillimus
Odontoponera denticulata
Anochetus sp.
Colobopsis sp.
Pheidole megacephala
Tetraponera rufonigra
Dinomyrmex gigas
Why are we doing this
#1 - The Pain
Malaysians are catching up with the trend of ant keeping in recent years. Based on my personal experience of selling on Shopee for almost a year, I saw a lot of beginners that joined the hobby because they caught a colony of feral ants. The common feral species are Tapinoma melanocephalum (Ghost ants) and Monomorium pharaonis (Pharaoh ants). All seasoned keepers will know that these two species are nightmares. They do not know anything about these ant species and they purchased a formicarium on Shopee which isn’t cheap. When the ants begin to escape or start to die, they just quit the hobby thinking that ant keeping is not a good hobby.
#2 - Customer's Psychology (you can skip this part if you don't wanna read)
Let me be a nerd for a bit to explain how customer’s think. Let me give you a case study.
When someone catches a colony of feral ants (Ghost ants or Pharaoh ants) and have no idea about ant keeping, they will go on google and search about ant keeping which the info is very general. They do not have a lot of knowledge of the species and just simply look for an ant farm online and buy it. Customers usually feel reluctant to contact the sellers because sellers usually don’t reply to messages on these platform chats or these messages will be replied by representatives that do not have comprehensive knowledge on the item sold. It is even worse when the seller is a dropshipper.
Alright, now the beginner received the formicarium that is clearly not suitable for these small tiny Houdinis, without knowing anything about anti-escape, transferred these 2mm-long ants into a huge acrylic formicarium. Every single time the beginner tries to feed the ants, they will be capturing escapees instead. Worse case is when these ants escaped through the small gaps that all acrylic formicariums have due to laser cutting clearance. The beginner had a hard time containing the ants and the ants are so small, almost not visible at all. After keeping for a few days or a week, out of frustration, the beginner throws the entire setup away and won’t even think about the ant keeping hobby anymore because it gives them stress instead of enjoyment. That’s how a lot of new ant keepers fallout of the hobby.
#3 - The Solution
As one of the pioneers in the Malaysian ant keeper community, we know how hard it is to learn about these ants and have suffered so many losses while exploring. But we persevered so that the future generations of ant keepers could benefit from it. It is not just a mere hobby, it is an adventure.
What we do in AntsDIY is that we want to promote the hobby by making it beginner-friendly and affordable. So when there’s a beginner wanting to try out the hobby we provide proper education and a Camponotus colony along with a starter kit. The new keeper will have all the required resources and knowledge to start with a Camponotus colony. If their interest grew in the hobby, they already had the fishing rod to fish bigger fish. There won’t be beginners falling out of the hobby anymore due to lack of knowledge or starting off with the wrong species.
#4 - You Are The Answer
Ant colonies have high value back in 2017 because not many people know how to hunt for queen ants. Ant sellers will need to hunt the queen ants on their own, risking getting eaten by a lion, stomped by an elephant, and ran over in a stampede. There’s also no way to breed new ant colonies, although some species can be bred in captivity. That is why ant sellers marked up the price of ants, including beginner species that can be easily obtained, to more than RM100. But queen ant hunting is not difficult at all. Even beginners are catching queen ants and started selling ant colonies. Why buy from ant sellers when I can catch it myself? Sooner than we know, the demand for ant colonies declined so rapidly in less than 2 years and there are more than hundreds of ant sellers now in all over Malaysia that are all selling at the same marked up price. Eventually, everyone will be having too many ant colonies to care for and have no time to care for them. This is how most of the OG ant sellers quit the business and some even the hobby because it is not sustainable.
So how do we realise this dream of promoting the ant keeping hobby? The answer is you. By catching these easily obtainable beginner queen ants, we from AntsDIY will buy these queen ants from you. Then with the lowest price possible, we will raise and sell these ants along with our formicariums.