Managed to rescue my sugar drowning Ants

[AntsLuxembourg]

Hey,

So yesterday I had a random check on my second colony of Lasius Niger that I keep in a testtube and I was shocked to see them all dead or drowning in what appears to be thick sugar water. To explain how it got there, I placed a sugar lumb inside of their testtube in order to give them a long lasting supply of sugar while also providing protein from a mealworm I placed inside a few days ago.

The sugar lumb must have soaken up water and thereby created a flood inside the testtube. Just as a sidenote that is off-topic but a coincidence, here in Luxembourg and in our neighbouring countries Germany, Belgium, the Nederlands and possibly France, have been massiv floodings. I was luckily spared with the exception of getting an hours late for work but that's how it is and I'm glad to live higher up.

When I check it looked like they were all dead. Except for the queen and one or two workers that were still moving. I started to immediatly drain the testtube and attempted to rescue as many and as much as possible of what was left. At the beginning I started to soak up more of that sugary water and slowly scooped up the "dead" workers. Most of which looked dead, limp or otherwise petrified. As I was getting everything out I noticed that some ants had their antennas still moving and those were mixed in with the rest. So I started and tried to rescue them with priority.

As I kept going I saw more and more ants starting to move again and then I realized that they were possibly all or partly still alive. So my next move was to prepare a small plastic disc (the top of an asian restaurant take away soup box) and put some water on it to try and wash off some of the sugar that may have harden around the workers and prevents them from moving. Some workers were able to move much better and with greater ease shortly after this but most of the others didn't.

Due or thanks to this I decided to not throw the possibly still alive but dead looking workers away and tried to just clean them up and to free them from the sugar. I used normal paper towels which soaked up most of the liquid. So in the end I managed to get mostly everything out of the testtube and thanks to a squirting bottle that I got at a home depot I could shoot in some water and rescue most of the eggs so they can regrow. I will also have to put more focus and care into that colony to get them back on their feed. For now they all seem very much well nurished as they must have drank a lot of sugar water. It's all that it wasn't colored. ^^

This story is mostly to tell you guys to not do the same. I didn't know and would have never guessed that the sugar lumb would collect the water and humidity in the air to turn into some kind of death trap for my ants. This whole operation lasted for 40-50 minutes and sadly I got much less sleep because of this.

Anyway here are some pictures for you all to check out. https://imgur.com/a/MvRwA9f

[cosmo1190]

Hey,

So yesterday I had a random check on my second colony of Lasius Niger that I keep in a testtube and I was shocked to see them all dead or drowning in what appears to be thick sugar water. To explain how it got there, I placed a sugar lumb inside of their testtube in order to give them a long lasting supply of sugar while also providing protein from a mealworm I placed inside a few days ago.

The sugar lumb must have soaken up water and thereby created a flood inside the testtube. Just as a sidenote that is off-topic but a coincidence, here in Luxembourg and in our neighbouring countries Germany, Belgium, the Nederlands and possibly France, have been massiv floodings. I was luckily spared with the exception of getting an hours late for work but that's how it is and I'm glad to live higher up.

When I check it looked like they were all dead. Except for the queen and one or two workers that were still moving. I started to immediatly drain the testtube and attempted to rescue as many and as much as possible of what was left. At the beginning I started to soak up more of that sugary water and slowly scooped up the "dead" workers. Most of which looked dead, limp or otherwise petrified. As I was getting everything out I noticed that some ants had their antennas still moving and those were mixed in with the rest. So I started and tried to rescue them with priority.

As I kept going I saw more and more ants starting to move again and then I realized that they were possibly all or partly still alive. So my next move was to prepare a small plastic disc (the top of an asian restaurant take away soup box) and put some water on it to try and wash off some of the sugar that may have harden around the workers and prevents them from moving. Some workers were able to move much better and with greater ease shortly after this but most of the others didn't.

Due or thanks to this I decided to not throw the possibly still alive but dead looking workers away and tried to just clean them up and to free them from the sugar. I used normal paper towels which soaked up most of the liquid. So in the end I managed to get mostly everything out of the testtube and thanks to a squirting bottle that I got at a home depot I could shoot in some water and rescue most of the eggs so they can regrow. I will also have to put more focus and care into that colony to get them back on their feed. For now they all seem very much well nurished as they must have drank a lot of sugar water. It's all that it wasn't colored. ^^

This story is mostly to tell you guys to not do the same. I didn't know and would have never guessed that the sugar lumb would collect the water and humidity in the air to turn into some kind of death trap for my ants. This whole operation lasted for 40-50 minutes and sadly I got much less sleep because of this.

Anyway here are some pictures for you all to check out. https://imgur.com/a/MvRwA9f

alrighty,i need to be careful with mine

[AntsLuxembourg]

Just to give an update. If you had a look on the pictures and remembered one of the last pictures. The ants still all looked dead / clustered up. Well had a look this saturday and this was how it looked after.

https://imgur.com/a/76yZCZy

It looked as if nothing had happened and of course some of them were dead but most of them recovered and are alive. They might need another move just for hygienic reasons but I was relieved to see that they had in fact survived.

I did dare to put another sugar lumb in, however, I made sure that it was a very tiny one that is smaller than a sunflower seed. Just to keep the risk low and I will have another look later since I feed them a mealworm yesterday. I do however maybe need a second AC Anttower to give them some new space etc. ^^