2 replies to this topic

[EllisWyatt]

Back in September, Jordan from Ants Austrailia posted a cool video about wood ants. In it he made a claim about conifer resin being anti-microbial and preventing fungal and bacterial growth (link). I poked around a bit on the internet and verified that there is scholarly work confirming this claim. I'm wondering if anyone has used it in their formicaria to improve the health of their colony. The fact that only wood ants are known to do this (at least all the papers I found referenced specifically Formica spp. using resins this way), makes me wary of just throwing a bunch of it into every test tube and formicarium. Has anyone had any experience with using conifer resin with Formica or non-Formica spp.? Obviously I don't expect you to have data quantifying the effects. I'm mainly wondering if there are obvious problems. Like some ants eating it and it being poisonous to them or something like that.

 

I figure that if it genuinely is as beneficial to non-Formica spp., shouldn't we all be using this stuff? (I saw some older threads on this topic, but since none seemed to have any specific info beyond musings, I decided not to necro an old thread and make a new one instead.)

Edited by EllisWyatt, January 1 2018 - 7:16 PM.

[T.C.]

Yeah, I seen it in a documentary.  Some species apparently gather the resin for disinfectant purposes. But I think it's used for what the colony naturally gets on them foraging. So when they colony crawls back on the resin it kills everything. Your outworld in captivity I doubt would contain any of the harmful fungal and bacteria they encounter in the wild. You can't coat it on your nests if that's what your thinking. That just wouldn't work well.

[weathmatth]

I'm sure only Wood Ants are known to do this because of the formic acid they produce is used to break the resin down into something usable.