Greetings ant lovers,

This week, we get a glimpse of ants drinking honey. They gorge themselves with the honey and we even see coloured honey through their gasters. The video is our most relaxing and satisfying video yet! Enjoy!

Time Lapse – Ants Drinking Honey

Greetings, AC fam!

Welcome to the AntsCanada Ant Channel.

Now, a lot of you guys have mentioned to me and posted comments saying that watching the ants is really relaxing, and watching them do things is so satisfying.

So, I wanted to create this video of ants just drinking drops of honey.

So sit back, relax, and watch these Black Crazy Ants consume their favorite food: honey.

And for those of you that missed the commentary, I’ll be popping in here and there. Enjoy!

And just like that, they finished their first drop of honey.

Pretty cool, right? These ants really have a sweet tooth. Ready to see some more?

Time to add another, slightly larger drop this time.

Look at them just piling over that drop of honey! They really love their sweets.

Ants really need their sweets because it gives them very useful energy, which helps power them, as they work really hard around the clock.

The worker ants gorge themselves with liquid food. You can see their distended gasters, full like a balloon full of honey.

They fill their social stomach, which is kind of like an internal lunchbox.

What they do is they go back to the nest and engage in a sort of kissing action and transfer the food from mouth to mouth from their social stomachs.

This is how food is passed to all members of the colony.

All done!

And in case you were wondering, if you’re new to this channel, these ants are Black Crazy Ants known as Paratrechina longicornis.

They’re called Black Crazy Ants because of their erratic movements.

But this video is time-lapsed. This is their real speed, but don’t be fooled; these ants can have super hyperdrive with sudden bursts of speed.

This is them in constant motion. If you guys would prefer to see a non-time-lapsed version of this video, feel free to click this I-card here.

But meanwhile, so that you guys can see more of the action in a shorter time period, let’s go back to the time-lapse.

For those of you that are new to this channel and haven’t seen our latest video, we’re getting our subscribers—our AC family—to help decide on a name for this colony.

So feel free to click this icon whenever you’re ready to cast your vote on a pool of the top 20 name suggestions for this colony.

We’d really appreciate your vote and input.

And now, back to feeding this ant colony more drops of honey.

Check this out, guys:

One drop, two drops, three, and four drops.

And a fifth, larger drop.

I’m using a new camera to film these ants, and one thing I noticed while filming this video, which I hadn’t seen before, was that these ants actually have hairs on their gasters.

This new macro lens allows us to see those hairs on the gasters.

Initially, it looked like these ants were perfectly smooth.

I love how up close we can get to these ants with this new equipment.

Look at that huge mass and entanglement of legs!

They’re really doing their best to fit in all available spaces just to drink this honey.

All done!

They’re so fast.

I find ants to be some of the most efficient creatures on the entire planet.

These drops of honey, which are tiny to us, will go a long way for this ant colony, and the workers are very thorough.

Look at them thoroughly licking the surface of the rock just to make sure they got all the remaining honey.

So, what did you guys think? Was that relaxing or what? Satisfying?

Well, that’s not all because I’ve got something coming up that I think you’ll really like.

I’ve added some food coloring to these drops of honey.

Now, this is where it really gets cool.

Watch as the colored honey fills up their gasters.

And remember, please subscribe if you liked this video. Thank you!

Remember how earlier I said that ants transfer food from mouth to mouth in a kissing action? Here it is! It’s known as trophallaxis.

Other insects do this too, like bees and termites.

It’s a great way for eusocial insects to distribute the food around.

You can clearly see the food coloring now in their gasters.

You can also see which ants are coming back for seconds after having fed on our non-colored honey drops.

A little bit of background info on these ants:

These Black Crazy Ants have managed to invade a lot of countries.

They are a pan-tropical species, which means they’re found in almost all tropical countries.

Their colonies grow very fast, and they eat a lot of food.

It’s unknown where these ants originated from, but my myrmecologist friend, Dr. James Trager, says there are suspicions that these ants originated in India.

The colonies are known as polygynous, which means they have multiple queens, each of them laying many, many eggs.

As pets, they’re pretty docile and are harmless to humans.

I personally love them. I mean, how can you not? They’re cute!

Check out this ant here, pumping food out of her social stomach and into the social stomach of her fellow sister worker.

She’s almost done—just a little bit more to go.

All done! Now to visit the remaining drop of honey for a reason.

Can you believe how efficiently these ants finished those drops of honey? Pretty fast, right?

It’s amazing to think that this happens in the world of ants every single day.

And if it’s not a drop of honey, it’s either nectar from a flower, some fruit, other sweet plant exudates, honeydew from plant insects, or even a little bit of your leftover soda!

Whatever the case, I just find it pretty cool to be able to see them up close like this, just doing their thing.

There you have it, guys—ants eating drops of honey.

So, what did you guys think? Was that satisfying?

Let me know in the comments section if you like these types of videos.

Hope you guys enjoyed this video!

Be sure to subscribe if you haven’t yet, because we’ve got tons more videos about ants coming up.

And hey, do I see a few ants that look like they’re drunk and passed out?

It’s kind of strange seeing them… and now they’re getting up.

You scared me for a bit! Maybe they got stuck in the drops of honey.

Ants really are funny.

Anyways, as I was saying, thanks so much for watching this video, and stay tuned for our next video.

And live forever, guys! Bye-bye!

Alright, guys, time for the AC Question of the Week.

Last week, we asked: What is the name of the gorilla that lost his life after being shot at a zoo on May 28 of this year?

Congratulations to Isaac Schultz, who correctly answered: Harambe. Isaac, you’ve won an AC Ant Shirt weeks before it debuts at our shop!

And for this week’s Question of the Week, we ask: What is the name of the process in which ants transfer food to one another from mouth to mouth in the kissing action?

Leave the answer in the comments section, and you could win a $50 gift card from our shop.

Thanks, guys, so much for watching another episode of the AntsCanada Ant Channel.

Please subscribe to our videos if you liked what you saw, and also don’t forget to check out our cool ant playlists on this channel.

And visit AntsCanada.com for more ant goodies and for information on ant keeping.

We’ve taught thousands of people all over the world how to keep ants, and we hope to make your ant-keeping experience memorable and satisfying.

Until next time, AC fam, and don’t forget to hit that bell icon beside the subscribe button.

Thank you!