Honey ants, sometimes called honeypot ants, are found in a few arid areas of the world, including Mexico (where Noma had a pop-up restaurant in 2017) and Australia. They are not a separate ant species, but rather a role taken by ants of different species.
Worker ants feed honeypots nectar collected from various plants until their abdomens expand to the point where they look ready to burst and spill the amber liquid inside. Known as 'ant honey', the sweet liquid is regurgitated by the honeypot ants whenever members of their colonies are in need of sustenance.
Honey Ants Information
The sweet nectar makes it one of the popular bush tucker eaten by the Indigenous Aborigines of Australia, especially in Central Australia and the Northern Territory. Women search for the nests of the honey ants, found in the roots of a specific Mulga tree.
Despite its cultural and nutritional importance for local Aboriginal people, the unusual insect honey produced by Western Australian honeypot ant (Camponotus inflatus) has to date been rarely investigated.
Nothomyrmecia, also known as the dinosaur ant or dawn ant, is an extremely rare genus of ants consisting of a single species, Nothomyrmecia macrops. These ants live in South Australia, nesting in old-growth mallee woodland and Eucalyptus woodland.
Sugar ants are some of the most common types of ants in Australia. They are common across Australia. You can spot these ants in your kitchen, under rocks and logs, within open forests and woodlands.
A wide range of plants and animals were eaten by Australia's Aborigines, and insect foods included certain ants, grubs, moths and beetles, while streams provided fish and eels (in some regions). Birds were eaten, including waterfowl, scrub fowl, the cassowary and the jabiru.
Honeypot ants such as Melophorus bagoti and Camponotus spp. are edible insects and form an occasional part of the diet of various Indigenous Australians.
Flying ants
Some honeypot ant larvae grow into adults with wings. After a good summer rain, they fly from the nest to mate. Females then drop the wings and start a new colony of ants.
Bull ants, bulldog ants, jumper ants – call them what you want, these little buggers are dangerous as hell! The Myrmecia Gulosa is a big species of Australian ants that are notorious for their painful stings and aggressive behaviour towards humans.
Coastal brown ants (Pheidole megacephala), also called big-headed ants, are a major nuisance ant species in Western Australia. They are an urban pest and are often seen in lawns and in brick paving which they tend to undermine.
Sugar Ants are relatively large ants with an orange-brown middle and black head and abdomen.
Aboriginal & Traditional
The abdomen of the Green Ant has been regarded as a traditional food for many years by Australia's indigenous community. Aboriginal people ate the white larvae found inside the leafy nests. It has a lemon taste.
Their job is to store the nectar for times when nectar becomes scarce and then feed the rest of the colony. They feed the rest of colony by hanging upside down from their dome-shaped nests.
It's commonly known that ants love sweet stuff, of course ants would eat natural honey that contains 70% and above of sugar! As the water content of mature honey is relatively low (below 20%), making the texture sticky, ants do not usually go for pure honey as they would have to risk their lives just to eat the honey.
There is also a chance that you can contract salmonella from eating food that ants have come in contact with. By crawling across your food, they can spread salmonella for you to ingest. The best way to avoid these situations is to engage in proactive ant prevention measures and professional ant control services.
Workers can live 2 years or more.
yam, taro, cassava, wild yams, eggs, shellfish and small animals whilst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men fished and hunted for larger land and sea animals such as dugong, kangaroo and turtles.
Aboriginal People of coastal Sydney collected and ate many different types of shellfish and crustaceans.
Three quarters of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (76%) consumed a food from the Meat, poultry and game products and dishes group.
Vinegar is often a common home remedy for insects and ants are no exception. To use vinegar as a homemade ant spray, simply fill a spray bottle with a 50/50 solution of vinegar and water. Spray the solution directly on the ants and then wipe the area clean with a damp paper towel.
The white “ant eggs” carried by workers when an ant colony is disturbed or moving are not the eggs but the pupal stage of complete metamorphosis. Ant eggs are almost microscopic. The larvae that hatch from them are helpless, grub-like young that the workers must feed and care for.
Ghost ants get their common name from the fact that they are very hard to see due to their pale color and tiny size. They are a tropical species, probably of African or Asian origin. In the United States, ghost ants are found primarily in central and southern Florida and Hawaii.