Sugar water (half and half) is fine to feed your ants with, but mine always came on better when I fed them on honey water (half and half). If you decide on this you have to make sure the honey is free from insecticide and miticides. I say this because alot of bee keepers fumigate their hives with miticide to protect against these. this miticide doesnt effect bees but could have an effect on small ants like niger because they are so much smaller than bees (insecticidal activity is directly related to body mass). I always get my honey from local suppliers that I trust not to use chemicals on their hives.
If there are larva or young ants in a colony them there will always be a necessity to feed them on either freshly killed or live insects. They will benefit from killing insects themselves but they need to be strong enough to do this. It's sometimes better to feed new colonies on dead insects. Worker ants feed solid insect protein to older larva whereas alot of sterile eggs (most laid by new workers) are fed to small larva. In fact, if larva are located within striking distance of a pile of fertile eggs they will try and eat these. The workers are usually careful to keep these seperate so their are no accidents.
Young workers will literally suck out the body fluids from freshly killed insects. Also, the softer the body of the insect, the more the ants like it and the more nutrition they can extract.
Tags: Keeping Ants
About Us
AntBlog is a budding community of ant enthusiasts. We study ants and track ants in the news.... more
Featured
Latest updates
Do ants bleed? Ant circulatory system
Ant blood is a colourless liquid. It is circulated through the body by the contraction...
Formicarium
A formicarium is a purposefuly designed enclosure used to contain and study ants. The...
Eusociality
The term eusocial was introduced in 1966 by Entomologist Suzanne Batra and subsequentl...
About us
We're a community of ant enthusiasts who've been online since August 2008. Richard is ...
Keeping ants in captivity
Keeping and studying ants can be a rewarding experience. Wether you're interested in b...