How Do Little Ants Spend the Winter? A Detailed Explanation of Ant Overwintering Habits
Little ants spend the winter in their burrows, and they prepare well before winter arrives. First they carry weed seeds, preparing them for sowing next year. At the same time they carry aphids, scale insects, treehoppers and lycaenid butterfly larvae and so on into their nests to overwinter, drawing their excrement as food (honeydew).
I. Little Ants' Feeding Habits
Ants are divided by feeding habits into: lower types, which are carnivorous, feeding on insects, small animals and even sick or dead large animals; the Dolichoderinae subspecies, and the more advanced types in the Myrmicinae and Formicinae, which can feed on both animals and plants, and are especially fond of the “honeydew” secreted by aphids and scale insects; and most other ant species, which are omnivorous and mostly feed on seeds, fruits, insects and so on. For example, Polyrhachis dives is a relatively advanced omnivorous species and can be fed rice bran, wheat bran, beans, sugars, melons and fruits, and animal-based feed such as fish meal, silkworm pupae, bones, eggs, live or dead insects and so on, and can also be fed chicken feed or a self-mixed feed. Ants of the Ponerinae and Ecitoninae generally feed only on meat.
II. What Natural Enemies Are Ants Afraid Of
1. Anteater: the anteater's food is ants, termites and other insects, with ants as its staple food. The anteater has a large appetite and can eat 454 grams of ants at one time, but one anteater eats ants from a single ant nest for only about 140 days, then leaves and moves to another ant nest. By eating this way, it can ensure that the ants in the nests within its territory survive, so that it can come back another day for a fine meal.
2. Some aphids will eat ants, but some aphids and ants have a symbiotic relationship, and the ants instead protect them.
3. Frogs love to eat small insects and are good at spotting small moving insects; when an ant passes by, the frog does not pick and choose its food either.