How do you feed small colonies?? Please help!

[ellie5010ml]

Hi! I'm a novice ant keeper struggling to understand feeding my new colony. I have a test tube with maybe 20 workers and a queen (small species). I've been giving them drops of honey, but haven't given them any protein because I'm not sure how. I can only buy meal worms in groups of 12, but they're not even going to eat half of one. I don't want to waste 11 meal worm lives. Ideally, I'd get a cricket leg, but how do I obtain such a treat?? I can catch insects outside but then run a greater risk of parasites or dare I say pesticides getting into my colony. Although I could try boiling them. What do you all do with new colonies? in the past I've just been able to steal from my dads fruit flies but now I'm in college and can't. Thanks for any advice!

[Antloverhuman]

For protein i usually give them boiled eggs or chicken that i eat. Just make sure the food you give them doesn't have any salts or spices in it otherwise it may harm your colony. Also where i live, every time it rains there are alot of termite alates so i catch them and freeze them so whenever i want to give them protein i can.