The AntsCanada Ant Forum's

I just wanted to have a topic where people can share their pictures/thoughts about feeding ants in general, hopefully there will be a discussion going on.

Here is a picture of a meal of few days for my lasius colony of 20-30 workers and 10-20 egg and the queen (not sure of exact numbers because their nest is underground and in soil.
Usually 1-2 ant do basic groundwork around the nest, there is 1 scout and 1 forager for constant hard parts chewed for the larvae, when fresh food is given usually 5-6 start to forage for a few hours.



The food shown on the picture are:
Raw honey (furthest on the pic)
Acacia tree honey (closest white drop)
Linden tree honey (right brownish drop)
^all mixed with water ofc

A meal worm cut in 3 pieces + the head (I kill them by ripping their head off and I noticed my ants love if I include the head as well because it can be carried by one worker and they always bring it inside the nest as it)

And the purple drop on the left is a mixture of water, 2 types of honey, sugar and BCAA food *****(raspberry flavor ).

In the background you can see my basic water tube with cotton and the bonsai tree which has the ants nest at it's roots. (If you've read my other topic about this outworld you can laugh now, well, they managed to move in )

Food.

But in all seriousness, I feed chicken, honey, and basically anything else I can.

Another feeding day for my girls

Lasius Niger colony 20 ish workers + brood + queen



The scout already found the goods!



She just loves the raspberry syrup



The dish of my other queen (only queen and a few egg, she is semi-claustral, this should statisfy her needs )

That's a lot of food for a small colony. They eat that all up in a day?

I feed mine:
distilled water
honey water (1 part honey, 4 parts water)
frozen fruit flies

I tried feeding cut up mealworms but they seem to prefer the fruit flies

I feed my Solenopsis colony 10 crickets a day (protein), I give them 1 KitKat a week (sugars) and they go thru a water tube every two weeks (of course my soil nest has a bottom layer of substrate that is watered once a week so they get moisture from there also.

I bought a container of live crickets and froze them. Now about every day or every other day I get one out, break it into three pieces, and set it in the outworld. This is their favorite protein. I will also sometimes give them little baby pieces of whatever protein I had that day occasionally. (Meat, seeds, nuts, egg, whatever) for sugar, I generally provide them with a test tube of sugar water connect to their hybrid nest and I will also give them whatever sugar I have laying around (Honey, maple syrup, apple sauce) My colony is tetramorium and has 100-200 workers.

MadVampy wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 17, 2017 2:24 am

I feed my Solenopsis colony 10 crickets a day (protein), I give them 1 KitKat a week (sugars) and they go thru a water tube every two weeks (of course my soil nest has a bottom layer of substrate that is watered once a week so they get moisture from there also.

Holy cow! How many ants do you have in that colony?

idahoantgirl wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 17, 2017 1:14 pm

.. for sugar, I generally provide them with a test tube of sugar water connect to their hybrid nest and I will also give them whatever sugar I have laying around (Honey, maple syrup, apple sauce) My colony is tetramorium and has 100-200 workers.

What proportion of sugar to water do you use for your sugar water? For the other sugars you mentioned, do you mix them with water or give it to them pure

I made a colony journal on formiculture where I've listed everything I did ever feed to my ants, including the ratio of their sugar waters (usually 3:1 or 4:1 water:sugar).

http://www.formiculture.com/topic/4167-serafines-camponotus-barbaricus-welcome-to-lazy-tube/

notmyidea wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 18, 2017 2:08 am

idahoantgirl wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 17, 2017 1:14 pm

.. for sugar, I generally provide them with a test tube of sugar water connect to their hybrid nest and I will also give them whatever sugar I have laying around (Honey, maple syrup, apple sauce) My colony is tetramorium and has 100-200 workers.

What proportion of sugar to water do you use for your sugar water? For the other sugars you mentioned, do you mix them with water or give it to them pure

I don't really have a ratio, I just mix in some sugar to water and taste it to see if it's sweet. It should be pretty sweet since you want the maximum energy possible in one ant sip. For the other sugars, they don't need it to be mixed with liquid, but maybe you could just for the honey since ants can get stuck in it