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Ants on surface of honey - OK to eat?
A while ago (almost a year) I bought a pot of honey. Apparently after I first opened it the lid wasn't tight, because today I opened the lid and saw a dozen or two tiny dead ants on the surface (these are the same ants that sometimes maraud our kitchen).
So... if I somehow get the ants off the top layer of honey, is the honey safe to eat? Will it taste OK?
I know that theoretically ants may walk on gross stuff, but they aren't known for carrying diseases as far as I know, and honey is antimicrobial. And these are really tiny ants, and they are only on the surface, not mixed into the honey.
Yeah, I know I can buy more honey - but this is fancy lavender honey, they don't have it at TJ Maxx anymore!
5 Answers
- Anonymous1 decade agoFavorite Answer
i'm sure it's ok. But i personally would not be able to eat the honey, knowing that ants were on it. The visual of it would flash into my head every time i wanted to eat the honey.
I would at least put it in another container to help hide what happened. LOL
- 5 years ago
The diet of ants varies from species to species, but in the UK they mainly eat small invertebrate animals of about their own size, and the occasional vertebrate corpse. They will also eat some fruits, and are very partial to sugary substances. Some ants keep 'herds' of aphids much in the same way as we keep cows. They will place the aphids onto the stem of various plants, such as a rose bush, and allow them to feed off the sap within. A hungry ant will stroke the aphid on the back with its antennae which will then produce a drop of a sweet substance known as honeydew, which ants are very partial to. In return the ants will take care of the aphids and protect them from predators, and sometimes provide them with shelter within the ant nest. Examples of ant species that do this are the common black garden ant Lasius niger, and the red ant species Myrmica. If you place a teaspponful of honey on the floor next to an ant nest in the winter months (when for some ants food becomes more difficlut to get) you will notice how within a few mintues the ants have swammed the honey and will eat it all.
- swedenLv 41 decade ago
Maybe we can all pool together to send you two dollars for a new jar of honey.
