How Do Ants Make Honey?
Among insects, the ants are the most hardworking. They feed their colony by extracting food from the ground and storing it in their abdomens. In fact, they are able to carry around 50 times their body weight.
They also use vibrations as an alarm signal. There are a number of species of ants in the United States. They include harvester ants, false honey ants, and small honey ants. The small honey ants are not to be confused with honeypot ants.
The small honey ants are known to consume honey and sugar. They have an abdomen with a circular pattern of hairs on the tip. The small ants also have a thin thorax and a segmented waist.
The tiny ants have a life cycle that is akin to most other species of ants. They have an outer pair of jaws that are used for carrying objects and digging. The small ants also have a specialized pair of workers called repletes. These are the ants that raid the honey.
The small honey ants’ diet varies depending on the plant sources they are consuming. The small ants eat honeydew produced by hemipteran sap-suckers. They also consume nectar. In fact, a few species of ants eat the larvae of other ant species.
Some ants have a very powerful sting at the tip of their abdomen. The small ants are found throughout the Americas.
While some insects produce odorless gas that might stink, the most common gases in an insect fart are hydrogen and methane.