A cast of a carpenter ant colony is made using molten aluminum to fill the tunnels and chambers. The resulting cast consists of a main shaft with long, irregularly shaped chambers extending outward and mostly concentrated near the colony entrance. If you've seen my fire ant colony casting video, I think you'll be very surprised at the difference between the colony structures of these two types of ants. The cast turned out 31" deep, with a max width of 18", and a weight of 3.5 lbs. Until I started this project I was under the impression that carpenter ants only lived in wood. When I first noticed these ants with their underground colonies, and identified them as being in the camponotus genus (carpenter ants), I was pretty surprised. Some carpenter ant species do nest in the ground. I'm in the process of learning to identify ants down to the species, so I can't say with 100% confidence what species these ants belong to. When this cast was made, there were many of these colonies in the area, with the ants becoming very active at night. This particular colony appeared to have no activity so I assumed it to be abandoned. Upon casting and digging, it appears that there were no ants in this colony. See some detailed pictures of the resulting display at http://anthillart.com/castings/042/ The cast is up for auction at http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item;=251432993827

• published: 24 Jan 2014
• views: 3260