Christmas Red dye = massive ant fight

[Chamety]

I tried to color the sugar for my crematogaster colony. I picked out some dye I had, called "Christmas Red." It colored the sugar water just fine. I wanted to see the brood, not really the ants themselves. However, each ant that left the test tube where the sugar was stored came under attack. It caused a HUGE ant war. The colony is about 200 strong, and I had about 30 casualties. I have quarantined some of the ants which were attacked. They don't seem to fight each other.

How do I reintroduce these ants to the colony? I have no idea how to solve this problem.

[SolenopsisKeeper]

I tried to color the sugar for my crematogaster colony. I picked out some dye I had, called "Christmas Red." It colored the sugar water just fine. I wanted to see the brood, not really the ants themselves. However, each ant that left the test tube where the sugar was stored came under attack. It caused a HUGE ant war. The colony is about 200 strong, and I had about 30 casualties. I have quarantined some of the ants which were attacked. They don't seem to fight each other.

How do I reintroduce these ants to the colony? I have no idea how to solve this problem.

What attacked? The colony members or unwelcome ants? Assuming it is unwelcome ants, you need more layers of protection to prevent them from getting in. First, you can use a anti climb barrier(refresh it for best results). Second, you could create a moat around your colony. Also, you could use (I forget what type) of chalk, AC used it in one of his pharaoh ant videos.

[AntsLuxembourg]

Depending on the color used, it could mean either of the following.

1. The ants had a negative reaction to the coloring which made them believe that the pheromone they use was different and they couldn't identify each other.
2. The ants actually recognize their body and they were miss-colored. Meaning others didn't recognize them anymore since they looked different from themselfs.
3. The coloring was poisoning them in a way that the ants were hallucinating or being the something like drunk.

Hard to tell if any of these theories apply but I would say, that it's not completely impossible. Crazy, but not impossible.