Greetings AC Family,

Ever think of eating an ant? This week we take a look at some juice-filled ants that native peoples have been eating for centuries. Honeypot ants are some of the most interesting ants in the world, and due to overwhelming requests to do a video about them, we have decided to have honeypot ants be our featured ant for this year’s Valentine’s Day Special.

We also launch our annual Ant Love Contest where we give away an All You Need Omni Gear Pack to a lucky winner, so head on over to our Official Facebook page and LIKE the page to participate. All you have to do is look for the pinned post featuring this week’s video and answer in the comments section of that post: “WHAT IS ANT LOVE TO YOU?”

We will choose 1 lucky winner and announce the results in next week’s video. We also give prizes to runners-up, so be as creative as you can, and good luck! Ant love forever!

Enjoy this week’s video:

Sweet Candy Ants – Honeypot Ants | Ant Love Contest 2017

Welcome everyone, to the amazing world of ants.
On this channel,
we continue to discover how epic the lives of these small insects truly are.
The ant world is full of wonder,
terror,
adventure,
kindness,
and surprise.
With over six hundred thousand subscribers now – and counting –
composed of you, new and old AC family members,
it is evident
that ant love has, and continues to swell, to global proportions.
And so, with it being Love Month,
and just a few more days until Valentine’s Day,
here on the AntsCanada channel,
we wanted to feature the lives of an ant
which we had gotten so many requests to cover.
With their huge swollen gasters full of food,
these ants, by far, are among the most peculiar, interesting, and loved ants in the entire world.
You won’t want to miss all the sweet discoveries ahead…
so keep watching until the end,
where we also announce our annual Ant Love Contest…
where we give away a full ant setup!
Are sweets the way into a lady’s heart?
Well…
perhaps in this case, yes.
Welcome everyone, to the marvellous world of honey pot ants,
here on the AntsCanada channel.
WHISPERED: Please subscribe to my channel,
WHISPERED: and hit the bell icon,
WHISPERED: Welcome to the AC Family.
WHISPERED: Enjoy.

Honeypot Ants
If you haven’t seen them yet,
these ants are the famous honey pot ants.
Native to western U.S. and Mexico,
indigenous people of these areas have eaten these honey pot ants for centuries.
Could you imagine popping one of these juice-filled ants into your mouth?
So what do these balloon-looking ants do anyway?
What are they for?
In honey pot ant colonies,
some workers become what are called “Repletes” –
living storage receptacles –
that get fed so much food
they completely balloon up;
and do nothing but hang from the walls and ceiling of their nest!
Though they are called honey pot ants,
those gasters do not contain any bee honey.
The fluid inside these honey pot ants
consists rather of simple sugars,
unmodified from their original state.
Usually nectar from flowering plants,
exudates from galls,
and the secretions of aphids and other plant insects.
In this particular video, however,
these ants appear green,
because they have been fed sugar water with green dye.
This particular colony of honey pot ants,
of the species Myrmecocystus mexicanus,
belongs to a friend of mine named Drew;
one of our GAN farmers in LA, California.
He houses this awesome honey pot ant colony in a simple plastic dirt container,
with a smaller dirt container placed inside, forming a 1cm space between the containers for the ants to dig;
and then peat moss placed inside the smaller container to make it look like a natural wall.
Don’t the ants look beautiful?
Wow!
There you’ll see the queen,
who is larger than all her workers
and does not do any replete work.
She’s normal-shaped, just larger.
Here you will see ordinary workers tending to the brood,
making sure they’re all well fed,
and cared for.
Here are the pupae,
the cocoons,
and you want to hear something pretty crazy?
You might have noticed that each cocoon here has a green dot.
Usually, these dots are black in the wild.
The black dot on ant cocoons is called the “meconium”,
the fecal pellet.
So get this:
when ants are larvae,
in their baby stage,
they eat and eat and eat
and continue to grow;
however, they never poop!
Everything remains inside them,
up until right before they pupate,
to become these cocoons.
When they spin the cocoons,
the final step is to poop out this meconium,
meaning all the food waste they built up during the course of their entire larval stage!
It therefore appears on every cocoon as a tiny dot.
That’s why the meconia on these cocoons are green,
because they were fed green sugar water growing up.
It made their meconia green.
Isn’t that amazing, guys?
Imagine having a baby that only poops once in its entire life,
right before teenagehood,
and get this:
what is even more fascinating
is that this meconium is expelled inside the cocoon,
and this lifestyle is perfect for them,
because pooping only once and inside the cocoon
means their entire colony can remain as sterile and clean as possible;
which is super important in an underground community of animals where it is moist.
You see, in these environments, bacteria, fungi, and disease can thrive,
so the cleaner the ants can be, the better.
Less poop around means a cleaner home.
This also applies to the repletes;
having repletes means that you don’t have to have food laying around
and getting moldy – which can endanger a colony.
All food gets stored inside the repletes’ bodies,
and anytime a member of the colony needs to eat,
they simply touch mouths;
a process called trophallaxis,
and the replete regurgitates some of its yummy contents.
Ants don’t need fridges.
They have it all figured out.
Honey pot ants are from arid regions,
where they experience long periods of drought
and lack of food and water resources;
which is why evolution has formed these ants into these perfect storage units.
According to myrmecologists,
nectar and honeydew are not the only fluids these ants store.
Apparently, there are also workers called aquapletes, which store water;
and even a third type of repletes that has been thought to contain body fluids of insect prey.

Where to Find
So where can one find these ants?
Luckily,
they are native to U.S. states like California.
So if you are from there,
you’re in luck!
You can find the queen alates from late winter to late summer,
in open dirt areas in the desert,
foothills,
and even arid mountain habitats.
In most, if not all, species of honey pot ants,
mating flight occurs following light rain.
A favorite time seems to be late afternoon or early evening.
In arid habitats with their unpredictable rainfall,
the honey pot alates
wait until suitable rainfall occurs.
And once it does,
the males and the females swarm from the nest and fly forth.
Good luck to those of you who plan to look for these queens this year.
There is also another type of ant called the false honey pot ant
(Prenolepis imparis)
which also have repletes,
but they aren’t as pronounced as the Myrmecocystus.
Still really cool though.
The good news about these false honey pot ants
is that they are found throughout North America,
and actually have their mating flights soon…
within a few weeks.
They’re also called winter ants because they fly so early in the year in North America,
sometimes when there’s still frost on the ground,
so keep your eyes open for them soon.
Australia also has ants that are commonly called honey pot ants,
and they belong to a completely different genus,
Camponotus,
the genus of carpenter ants.
You can find these ants in arid regions.
Drew keeps these honey pot ants in media that is relatively dry,
but moistens it periodically;
and feeds them a diet of
both protein through insects
and sweet liquids like sugar water.
They can also be kept in a dirtless setup,
as seen here.
It is amazing
how specialized and perfectly tailored
their evolutionary design can be
in order to deal with living in places where they exist.
These ants are so well loved by ant enthusiasts around the world,
and I’m happy to have presented them to you for our Valentine’s Day episode.
I wish you and your loved ones a happy Valentine’s Day, and thank you for watching.
It’s Ant Love Forever!