York Region native Zachary Liu said his love for insects began when he was a child, with his mother reading to him by his bedside.
The Richmond Hill resident said his mother was afraid of insects and did not want to see that same fear in her son. So, she would read to him bedtime stories and encyclopedia entries about all kinds of animals, including insects.
But that soon blossomed into Liu loving all kinds of creatures — with his favourite becoming ants.
“The plan backfired because the natural next step, you’re three years old, and you’re coming home with frogs in your pockets,” Liu said. “For me, ants just happened to be the ones that I ended up finding the most interesting. I think ants have a lot of behaviours. It’s a lot more complex than people give them credit for.”
The McGill University student has taken that passion to build up a wide-ranging ant farm business in Keswick. Canada Ant Colony has operated over the past several years, offering ant colonies to museums, film production and the public.
Liu has built the business through high school and his early university life, gathering ants from York Region and beyond. The business has grown, and though Liu said it does not make much profit, it does have about $250,000 in annual sales.
The ant business became a way for Liu to pursue his passion for ant farms, which are contained ant colonies than can be kept in a home. Liu said that with little money, connecting with suppliers was a way to afford the equipment he wanted.
“I’d find and raise extra colonies, I’d sell those for cash or trade them for supplies and that kind of organically build up a little network,” he said.
The business offers ant colony equipment, and the ants raised to become colonies. Liu said they are also looking to design their own kits that could get to the market and become massively popular.
Ants make for fascinating pets, with complicated behaviours and intelligence, Liu said. He noted that you can potty train ants to dump waste into a designated bin, and they are very low maintenance. You can even put a colony in a fridge to hibernate.
“It’s a very easy, very simple pet,” Liu said. “It’s a lot more hours you can just sit there and watch.”
Liu has kept working throughout his student life. Even now, studying university in Montreal, he said his time gets stretched.
But it is all worthwhile, Liu said.
“I enjoy the work. I think it’s fun, I think it’s challenging,” Liu said, adding he has got a lot of valuable experience doing this. “I’m getting to negotiate deals with companies internationally … It definitely gives me a lot more opportunities.”
Asked about the possible risks of ants becoming an invasive species when moved around as pets, Liu said that all his kits are sold with fluon, a substance used on containers to ensure ants cannot climb them to escape.
"I believe most ant keepers do keep ants with escape barriers, particularly those who are purchasing ants instead of those who collect them locally," he said.
The concern for invasive ants is more applicable in Europe, Liu said. He said it is generally prohibited to keep ants not present in Canada because of agricultural regulations.
"Generally, the consensus among Canadian ant keepers is that the standards that the government uses are too harsh, as they have a blanket ban on any foreign ants, instead of evaluating on a case-by-case basis, given that Canada's -40 degree winter should kill the vast majority of ant species," he said, adding they do have a small number of permits on exotic ant species but do not sell invasive species of concern to Canada.
Liu hopes he can build a kind of ant colony to get into more retail spaces.
“It’s having a little society on your desk because the ants are doing so much of the work,” Liu said. “What these colonies look like, there’s definitely an artistic level to it.”