There's been a fair bit of discussion about these jellies/syrups, "food","protein","jelly" and similar words should yield results, I was involved in a few threads as I wondered about making my foods.
In short - they were designed for beetles mostly and not tailored for ants.
- Some use milk derived proteins which are useless to ants.
- It is best to present protein and sugar as seperate foods, having a mixture risks adults getting too much protein and larvae getting too much sugar. These protein mixtures tend to contain a lot of sugar, which is what attracts the ants to it, they are not seeing it as a protein source.
- These protein foods are not a balanced source of proteins and the proteins present may not be accessible to the ants or larvae anyway.
So that's just some of the information you'll uncover when searching the forum, my take on it is that feeding as wide a variety of different proteins and sugars is best, no processed foods should be fed as a main or sole source of either sugars or proteins but I don't think they'd hurt if fed as part of a varied diet.
Others have their own thoughts on the matter, there are threads discussing the subject to be found if you hit the right search terms.
-
FSTP and ANTdrew like this
