"Honeypot ants are a highly valued source of sugar for the Aborigines of central Australia. Honeypot ant workers gather honeydew from scale insects and psyllids (jumping plant lice) and feed it to other workers called 'repletes' whose role in the colony is to act as living food vessels. The repletes develop enlarged abdomens and are kept safe in deep underground galleries where they hang from the ceiling. Repletes will regurgitate some of their nectar for other workers." FROM HPA
Honey pot ants are very well adapted to their desert environment. Because God created them that way! Doesn't it just blow you away to think that these tiny insects, with a microscopical brain, know even more than we do about surviving in different climates? They are so smart, that God tells use to go to the ant to learn how to work.
"Go to the ant you sluggard! Consider her ways and be wise, which having no captain, overseer or ruler, provides her supplies in the summer, and gathers her food in the harvest."
Proverbs 6:6
There are the worker ants that go out and collect nectar from insects and sweet plants. Then they come back to the colony and give the pot ants the sweet liquid through their mouths. Eventually these pot ants receive so much liquid that their abdomen expands and they attach themselves onto the ceiling of their nest and wait for hard times, when the colony needs extra food
This is a nurse ant that cares for the eggs. Aborigines will dig up the nests of honey pot ants, sometimes digging five feet to rake dozens of pot ants into a basket to cook or eat raw. They go for the ants with clear/yellow pots, these are sweeter and cleaner. The ants with darker abdomens, well the nectar might have come from decaying animals.
