Australian Honeypot Ant

• GeneralSome workers fill with nectar until they look like grapes, and serve as a living larder.
• The repletes cannot move: they hang from the ceiling for months and regurgitate food to their nestmates when asked, with a tap of the antennae.
• They are a highly prized traditional food of the Aboriginal peoples of the Australian desert, who dig down as much as a metre to unearth the nests.
• Their role allows the colony to survive the long droughts of the Australian interior, where there may be no nectar for months.
• It has a caste of workers called repletes, which the rest feed with nectar until their abdomens swell to the size of a grape: they hang from the roof of the chamber and serve as living larders.
• The repletes make up almost half the colony: in two nests excavated in the Northern Territory they accounted for 49% and 46% of the population.
• The largest replete measured had an abdomen of 15 mm and weighed 1.4 g.
• It is a traditional Aboriginal food, called yarumpa or wuukurta, and forms part of the Tjukurpa; the Honey Ant Dreaming site lies in central Australia.
• A 2023 study found that its honey has a distinctive antimicrobial activity, different from that of bee honey.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (insect)

Habitat and environment

Spinifex desert and arid scrub

Litter / clutch size

Nests of 1,000 to 4,000 individuals, with up to 66 chambers of repletes and 191 repletes per chamber, at 1.7 m deep

Sources consulted: Conway (1991), The Australian Entomologist · Dong et al. (2023), PeerJ · Islam et al. (2022), Molecules · Estudio de biologia y uso aborigen de Camponotus inflatus (The Australian Entomologist) · AntWiki, ficha Camponotus inflatus (repletas de 17 mm) · AntScout (16,5 mm) · AntWiki, ficha Camponotus inflatus · Estudio de biologia y uso aborigen de Camponotus inflatus · NCBI PMC9000567 · Estudio de biologia y uso aborigen de Camponotus inflatus en el Territorio del Norte (The Australian Entomologist)

Best time: Nests always associated with mulga (Acacia aneura), in sandy scrub of central Australia; the repletes hang motionless from the roof of the deepest chambers

The pins mark the parks where its presence is documented.