35 replies to this topic

[ANTdrew]

I don't know, but 50/50 Honey water is all I've ever fed my colonies. I just change it out every three days or so. It never tastes fermented to me at all by that point. The worst case scenario would be trace amounts of alcohol forming if you left it too long. If you want to use honey, just change it out frequently. I use Harris Teeter's organic wildflower honey.

A complete fermentation for a mead takes over a month.

[Rstheant]

You don’t want drunk ants running and killing each other like mad men.

[drtrmiller]

Something to keep in mind is that any creature that routinely eats fruits or sugary substances is going to run into fermented juices.

The chief issue I raised was with respect to using any live and active fermenting liquid in larger gravity liquid feeders, because the gas production will force the liquid out.  While I haven't seen any evidence that ethanol has a phagostimulatory effect on ants, I do know that ants are repelled by ethanol at higher concentrations.

 

In the past, I actually tried adding a small amount of ethanol to Sunburst Ant Nectar in an attempt to reduce the active water concentration (acting as a preservative), and even a small amount of ethanol made the solution less attractive to ants.  Ants and other animals are likely to continue eating fruits and liquids undergoing fermentation in the wild by virtue of the fact that sugar is a scarce resource to begin with, while animals with chewing mouthparts may also benefit from easier digestion of these decomposing foodstuffs.
 

Another issue with relying on fermentation to produce quality liquids to which ants are receptive, is that fermentation is an inexact science and extremely difficult to replicate—and that's putting things kindly.  Think of all the fermented wines, beers, and other beverages in the world.  Most antkeepers want sugary liquids to perform reliably and consistently every time, which would be the complete opposite of any liquid produced with the aid of fermentation.

 

These products are made of essential oils (ProHealth= lecithin [emulsifier], EO of spearmint, EO of lemongrass, and EO thymol) and they really lengthen feed-life and are safe for the bees when used/mixed properly. Are there similar products for ants?

 
Many types of volatile plant compounds repel ants.  If you conducted very careful and controlled experiments on ants with these compounds, you would likely be among the first to do so.
 
 

For what it’s worth I’ve fed colonies fermented honey water without issue in the past. They even seemed to enjoy it more when they would start to get bored of fresh mixtures.

 
I disagree with the idea that ants become "bored" with different sugar solutions; there must be a less arbitrary reason for why ants would be attracted to solution A over B.  If the workers are more receptive to one solution over another based on composition alone—which can best be determined by offering foods simultaneously to a large sample size of colonies—you should be able to replicate the more attractive solution and retain the advantages it has over the other solution so that it is preferred every time, rather than on irregular occasions.

Edited by drtrmiller, February 22 2019 - 12:01 PM.

[ANTdrew]

Thank you, drtmiller. Point taken.

[Jamiesname]

I'll start off by admitting that I didn't read every post in this thread, so forgive me if this was already brought up. The most important reason
why you shouldn't feed your ants honey is because it contains varying amounts of pesticides from the plants that the bees collect their pollen from, especially from honey produced by bees near large agricultural areas.

As a side note, it's almost impossible to guarantee that honey is organic unless you can track every flower that every bee has visited.

Just something to think about.

Edited by Jamiesname, February 23 2019 - 8:32 PM.

[JenC]

So should I get Sunburst Ant Nectar instead of honey?

[drtrmiller]

So should I get Sunburst Ant Nectar instead of honey?

 

The most important thing would be to find a sugary solution that works consistently and reliably for you and your ants. Plenty of people successfully prepare their own sugar water mixtures or use various types of honey, syrups, and other sugary liquids.

Sunburst Ant Nectar is simply a commercial option you may want to consider if you're looking for the convenience of a ready-to-use liquid that doesn't require any mixing or special storage, and is specially formulated for ants.

[JenC]

Ok thanks.

[Rstheant]

Yes Sunburst works best in my opinion.

[Nylanderiavividula]

I'll start off by admitting that I didn't read every post in this thread, so forgive me if this was already brought up. The most important reason
why you shouldn't feed your ants honey is because it contains varying amounts of pesticides from the plants that the bees collect their pollen from, especially from honey produced by bees near large agricultural areas.
As a side note, it's almost impossible to guarantee that honey is organic unless you can track every flower that every bee has visited.
Just something to think about.

Be careful without citing sources there for studies done on honey that may contain pesticides (I would invite you to read some of the work Randy Oliver has done concerning bees, honey, and pesticides). Honey is generally not that dangerous. Chemical compounds are indeed taken up by plant roots in a process called “absorption”. Most common insecticides are NOT systemic. Nicotenoids and neonicoteniods are a couple of the chemical classes that ARE generally systemic and can be expressed in plant tissues (and pollen and nectar). Neonicotenoids had been banned in Europe (not sure if they still are or aren’t) in an effort to turn around dwindling pollinator numbers. However, most neonicotenoids are applied as a seed coat so that as the planted seed germinates it is protected during its cotyledon stage and on into its true-leaf stage. What is currently being studied is exactly how long these effects in plants last as concerns acute lethality to insects and the far more complicated sub-lethal effects. It all sounds very scary, but in the end after a plant has begun absorbing a chemical compound most of them are rendered innocuous by the plants’ metabolism. Past that, when nectar is fully ripened into honey it goes through a number of processes (including having a chemical consistency very similar to peroxide at a certain stage) that would further serve to breakdown many chemical compounds. I am not an advocate of wanton pesticide use, but I also hate to see people create boogeymen because they lack information on a subject. Most pesticides are NOT systemic.

[Jamiesname]

I'll start off by admitting that I didn't read every post in this thread, so forgive me if this was already brought up. The most important reason
why you shouldn't feed your ants honey is because it contains varying amounts of pesticides from the plants that the bees collect their pollen from, especially from honey produced by bees near large agricultural areas.
As a side note, it's almost impossible to guarantee that honey is organic unless you can track every flower that every bee has visited.
Just something to think about.

Be careful without citing sources there for studies done on honey that may contain pesticides (I would invite you to read some of the work Randy Oliver has done concerning bees, honey, and pesticides). Honey is generally not that dangerous. Chemical compounds are indeed taken up by plant roots in a process called “absorption”. Most common insecticides are NOT systemic. Nicotenoids and neonicoteniods are a couple of the chemical classes that ARE generally systemic and can be expressed in plant tissues (and pollen and nectar). Neonicotenoids had been banned in Europe (not sure if they still are or aren’t) in an effort to turn around dwindling pollinator numbers. However, most neonicotenoids are applied as a seed coat so that as the planted seed germinates it is protected during its cotyledon stage and on into its true-leaf stage. What is currently being studied is exactly how long these effects in plants last as concerns acute lethality to insects and the far more complicated sub-lethal effects. It all sounds very scary, but in the end after a plant has begun absorbing a chemical compound most of them are rendered innocuous by the plants’ metabolism. Past that, when nectar is fully ripened into honey it goes through a number of processes (including having a chemical consistency very similar to peroxide at a certain stage) that would further serve to breakdown many chemical compounds. I am not an advocate of wanton pesticide use, but I also hate to see people create boogeymen because they lack information on a subject. Most pesticides are NOT systemic.

There's no question that you know more about this matter than I do. However wouldn't it have been easier to simply say that the issue is inconclusive? Perhaps that will change in the future, but for now it's an unnecessary risk to feed honey that may, or may not contain insecticides to insects. Not when there's other simple solutions out there such as sugar water.

[Rstheant]

Guys, if you have a solution that works for you, use that. It really doesn’t matter as long as your ants are doing okay. This is just a thread to kind of share different mixtures and concoctions. That’s all.

[Nylanderiavividula]

Jamiesname, my intention is not to castigate, but to educate. Most granulated sugars come from sugar cane (less and less in the US) and sweet beet varieties. If honey -“made” by bees and derived from nectar- runs the risk of containing systemic pesticides in dosage high enough to be damaging to the ants (wouldn’t the bee colony die first and the honey never make it to the shelf?) even after being processed first by the plant into nectar and then another process by the bees into honey, wouldn’t granulated sugars derived directly from plant tissues (cane and beets are farmed) be more likely to contain systemic pesticides in lethal dosages?
I do not know or have these answers, but if you are going to be afraid of honey due to the possibility of systemic pesticides, the same line of reasoning can be used to make a case against granulated sugars. I am only pointing this out.
All that being said, I am new to ant keeping and respect the information and direction of those who are more experienced in this field. Most of them on this thread have indicated that sugar water (or other mixtures made of granulated sugars dissolved in water) can be made to be more consistent in composition and performance in feeders. They have also said that honey/honey water has not shown any real benefit to colony growth over the use of sugar mixtures. So that is plenty argument enough for me to say I agree that sugar mixtures are the most-reliable bet in ant keeping.

I’ve made my living in pest-control for the past nine years and have run a side-line beekeeping business (focusing on honey production) for seven of those years. I am still doing both and maintain a keen interest in general entomology, insecticide toxicology, and all things apiculture. As you can imagine, most people find these interests contradictory, but I see that there are giant information voids where interest waynes on each side. The beekeepers aren’t interested in which chemical classes are systemic or not, only that pesticides kill bees so any and all pesticides are bad, period (you should see me trying to take part in local beeclub meetings...brutal!). And in pest control I see PLENTY of spray jockeys that don’t know a thing about basic insect biology or the importance of all or any arthropods in the globe’s ecological system, their chief concern is high lethality and residual effectiveness (you should see the looks I get from fellow CPCOs when I wax poetic about my ant colonies, apiaries, wormbed, mealworms, soldier flies, etc!). Thrown into all this confusion are consumers/laypersons! People who may want to buy all-“organic” at the store and question where your bees get their honey, but want you to use the “strongest stuff” at their home willy-nilly to nuke any and all creepy-crawleys that they might see in their driveway... For me, it is exasperating to the point that I just want to go flip rocks and logs quietly to find some ants and my equilibrium (crawling under a log, haha). Jamiesname, that is my personal perspective and I absolutely don’t want to come off as contentious because that is the fastest way to shut people down and stymie the learning process.
The best of luck to all of us in our interesting endeavors! I’ll shut up, now.

[Rstheant]

You don’t need to shut up. You’ve educated people and it’s their choice to accept what you said or deny it. Long explanations though.

[Acutus]

Interesting thread for sure. I've been using some Organic Wild flower Honey and the Ants seem to do well. They just don't drink as much as the did right  after capture. I typically make tons of Sugar water as I'm a bee keeper as well but the Honey flow has started so the bees won't take it until there is a Dearth.

I don't mix the honey with water I give it to them straight. Maybe I will try some sugar water mix (I think I have humming bird nectar too and see if it makes a difference to the ants. 

 

Thanks ALL good stuff!

[PaxxMantid]

All I can say is that I read some comments about how the sunburst brand ant nector was essentially just sucrose and could be made DIY. Well, I have tried a few different mixes, types of honey, hummingbird nector, etc. and I have never seen so much interest from the ants as I do when I put down a drop of Sunburst. It seems to really be attractive to the ants!