Moving a colony between nests

Move a colony when it runs out of room: brood and workers fill every chamber, or the queen's space is crowded. A nest that's far too big for a small colony is harder for it to keep clean and humid, so go up one size at a time.

The usual path is a test tube or Scout, then a Founder, then a Homestead. A Four Corners keeps up to four small colonies side by side.

• Fill the new nest's water and let it settle for a day.
• Plug every port you won't use, on both pieces.
• Keep the room steady and quiet while they move.

The straight Test-Tube Adapter is paused. Keep a healthy colony in its tube until you have a suitable route; never force a tube into an AA-01 port. In a connected outworld, you can lay the opened tube safely inside and let the ants walk toward the prepared nest.

Provide fresh drinking water and a damp new nest. Let the old tube gradually become less attractive; do not shake ants out or pull cotton with ants attached.

The Move-In Dock remains planned for January 1, for 16 mm tubes and nests without an outworld. Read its page for the cotton chamber and temporary connection. It is not currently orderable.

Set the Scout on a Scout Riser so its port lines up with the Founder's. Push a Link into a Founder port, then pull the Scout's Port Plug and push the Scout onto the other end of the Link.

Take the Cover off the Scout and let its tube run dry. As the Scout dries out, the colony moves across to the Founder's damp floor on its own.

Or keep the Scout as the queen chamber: leave its Cover on and leave it Linked to the Founder. The queen stays in the dark Scout while the workers spread out into the Founder.

Link a port on the old nest to a port on the new one. Founder, Homestead, Four Corners and the Frontiers all have their ports at the same height, so they join straight across on a flat surface.

Make the old nest less inviting: let its water run low while the new nest has full water.

Each quadrant takes one colony. Connect its Scout on a Riser with a Link, or let the colony walk from its tube in that quadrant's own connected outworld.

Some colonies move in a day; others take a couple of weeks. Leave them to it, and don't shake or tap the old home to hurry them.

Once the old home is empty, disconnect it, then plug the open port on the new nest or Link an outworld there. Clean the old home as described in the cleaning guide.