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As a former compound mixer for a large unnamed corporation, allow me. the two dollar bottle is full of essentially heavily processed chemicals that are measured and remixed and poured into the bottle. While there is quality control it is given a leway amount as to what's passable. This may be insignificant to us humans who by and large require lots of chemicals to affect us however ants would be different. I'd honestly check the ingredients if it lists a chemical you're unsure about search online for the sds and find out what it is. Maple syrup (which is expensive unless you love somewhere you can make you're own or a group) is tree sap and is essentially processed plant sugars and as long as the trees have never been sprayed with ant toxins (most places that do maple syrup making in the spring are usually set up in animal sanctuary/ conservation zones so are generally protected from that stuff) is the best option in theory next to tending aphids or growing a maple tree and doing it yourself the plus side rhe expensive bottle if used ONLY for your ants should last almost until the Next year's harvest.PwnerPie wrote: ↑Mon Jul 30, 2018 10:41 amQuick question. By "maple syrup" i assume you are referring to the really expensive stuff or the regular $2 giant bottle of it?CampoKing wrote: ↑Sat Jul 28, 2018 1:38 pmOk I'm definitely hopping on this topic because I just did massive research into the safety of honey for ants.
My conclusion: Don't use honey. Use maple syrup.
Here's why. Honey has more stuff in it than just sugar. It also has very low water content, so it will dehydrate ants when fed directly. The honey can and probably will have dormant bacteria or other pathogens in it, and that's one reason why there's a warning label on most honey to not feed it to kids under a certain age. Since bees and ants are both insects, it's likely that any pathogens carried by bees (and getting in their honey) will affect ants negatively, including killing them. There are documented cases of some ant species being carriers of chronic bee paralysis virus. It's not impossible that bees are also carriers of things dangerous to ants. Honey is so dry because nothing can grow in it, allowing it to keep fresh basically forever. But when you add water, it can quickly spoil because of the things waiting in it for the right growing conditions.
I recommend maple syrup for one very simple reason: it's basically tree sap. What do ants do in the wild all day when crawling up trees? Collecting tree sap (or closely related aphid honeydew). It makes much more sense to use syrup instead of honey, since syrup is pretty much what ants naturally eat anyway.
Hope that helps everyone.
Solid point. I dont know if I could ever bring myself to feed it to them again. My ants do so well with regular honey, the raw stuff scares me now. =(Hunter36o wrote: ↑Wed Dec 12, 2018 9:38 amConsidering honey is the go too. I would stop blaming the honey as a whole and question the product you used in the first place. Could have been a bad batch, it could have been compromised during transport. As mentioned my many about. Ant do eat honey on a regular basis and there are times of vids of ants raiding and taking over bee hives. They like honey.
I would bet that the honey you gave your ants was just in a bad way. I would advise using a different brand and a smaller drop.
Do not forget. You took your ants out of the wild when it was just a queen. Your colony is cleaner than wild ants and are not exposed to much other then their nest and what you provide. This means their immune systems do not match the ones of wild ants who, since day one have been fighting off god knows what which build the colony's over all immunity.