Our Story
What makes Buckeye Myrmecology stand out?
The Beginning
It was the summer of 2020, and I had been keeping ants for around two years at this point. My collection had turned into well over 20 colonies, and I was faced with a dilemma. In Ohio, I only had two options to buy formicariums to house my colonies: Spend a lot of money on nests in a style I liked from overseas, or spend slightly less — but still a lot — on nests in a style that I wasn’t a huge fan of. Instead, I created a third option: I decided to design and build my own nests. At first, they were nothing special; they were crudely made, and held together with whatever I happened to have laying around. With a lot of practice though, they began to get better. Slowly at first, but then improving quickly, to the point that other antkeepers I knew began to ask for a nest of their own, in the same style as the ones that I built for myself. This was the beginning of Buckeye Myrmecology.
Permits
Fast forward about a year, and we reach the summer of 2021. By this point, Buckeye Myrmecology is a real business! Up to now, we’ve been sharing our love for antkeeping with others by selling nests. However, if there’s two things that are non-negotiable in the hobby, a nest is only one of them. So what’s the other? You’ve likely guessed it by now, but the other half of the equation is ants to live in that nest! Recently, rumors had begun to swirl in the antkeeping community that it was possible to obtain permits that would let you buy and sell ants across state lines (ants are considered to be plant pests by the USDA, so it is illegal to bring them between states without a permit). Until now, only part of the permit process was understood by hobbyists. Some people had gotten permits to buy ant species from other states, but it was considered impossible to get a permit to sell a species to someone else.
Permits, Continued
Upon hearing there was a chance of being approved for sale permits, we knew we had to apply. Often the biggest challenge to getting started in antkeeping is finding ants, and being able to help out new keepers by providing an easy way to get started wasn’t an opportunity we could turn down. It took multiple months, and a lot of communication with the USDA, but by mid September, Buckeye Myrmecology became the first store in the US with permits to send a species to all 48 continental states, and DC too! The species in question was Lasius americanus, a well known ant that is very good for beginner keepers. By March of 2022, we had been approved to sell 96 different species, which was another record. In 2022, things kicked into full swing, and we started adding many different species to our shop.
Present Day
As I write this, it’s the end of January in 2023. Over the last year, we’ve helped more people learn more about ants than I could ever have dreamed of when I first thought about creating Buckeye Myrmecology, and I can only hope that we continue to do so for many years to come. For my entire life I’ve been fascinated with nature, and when I started to keep ants and learn about them, I was opened up to a whole new perspective on the world around me. Keeping ants allowed me to gain a greater appreciation of the natural world, and truly see that everything in nature is connected to one another. As large as a Giant Sequoia, towering over the forest, or as small and seemingly insignificant as a single worker ant, they’re all interconnected by a web of interactions so complex that we can only begin to understand them. By bringing antkeeping from my home to yours, I hope that you will also be able to learn about and appreciate the incredible diversity of nature just as much as I do.
— Luke Doyle, Owner of Buckeye Myrmecology LLC