What is Sunburst? - Ants Favorite Nectar
One of the biggest concerns when raising a colony of ants properly is feeding.
- Can I give them this?
- Will it have enough nutrients to keep the colony healthy?
- Could it harm my little ants?
These are questions that we’ve all probably asked ourselves at some point as keepers—and that’s normal, because we want the best for our little ones. So where does Sunburst come in? Well, let Terry, CEO of byFormica and creator of Sunburst, explain it through several points we prepared for him.
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Why was Sunburst created?
Before creating Sunburst, I noticed an endless number of recommendations within the ant-keeping community for sugar products and mixes:
"Use honey," says one user. Never mind the many different types of honey, many of which are sold only in the small regional area where they’re produced.
Another says, "My ants don’t like honey, but they love maple syrup."
"My ants prefer a 1:1 mix of sugar and water," replies a third.
And another joins the chorus: "I find that mixing sugar, water with honey, and amino acid supplements works best for my ants."
User-recommended recipes usually lack standard units of measurement. If you can’t tell whether to measure ingredients by weight or by volume, the recipe can’t be reproduced without a high probability of error. Even when recipes include units like grams, not everyone has a gram scale to measure small quantities of ingredients.
But why are there so many different recommendations, and why do so many ant keepers get continually frustrated by something that seems as simple as sugar water?
In many ways, ants are very simple. Tens of millions of years of evolution have programmed ants to recognize and be attracted to precise chemical cues commonly found in nature that are needed for growth and development. As such, ants do not detect odors or flavors the way people do. Instead, ants detect chemical signals with their antennae and constantly seek the specific chemical materials needed to produce more ants. Carbohydrates are one of those chemical materials that animals break down and use to produce energy.
The goal of Sunburst is to understand the natural chemical cues that most attract ants and to combine them to create a long-lasting, ready-to-use food source that is almost universally recognized and vigorously accepted by ant species that evolved in different ecological environments.
Healthy ant colonies should be receptive to Sunburst 100% of the time when they are seeking the sugars and the salt minerals it contains. We hope this can eliminate a source of frustration for beginner ant keepers, while also providing more experienced keepers with a convenient, reliable feeding solution—so everyone can enjoy watching ants feed and focus their attention on other aspects of ant keeping.
What do you think is the standout aspect?
Whereas competing products often consist of mystery potions with obscured ingredient lists or dubious claims, we created Sunburst Ant Nectar to maximize the following three metrics:
- How quickly ants drink the liquid, as influenced by the solution’s viscosity, material composition, and ingredient ratios.
- How much liquid the ants consume during each feeding (i.e., do they just sample the sugar or fill their social stomach completely?).
- The intensity of the foraging trail laid by the worker to recruit more workers to the food source, measured by the number of ants feeding over a given time period.
To determine the optimal formula, we offered many different formulas to several ant species, using different sugars and micronutrients, and then recorded lots of data. Sunburst Ant Nectar is the product of this rigorous scientific discovery process.
Do you recommend using only Sunburst as a carbohydrate diet, or adding other liquids like sugar water?
In support of user experimentation and discovery, we often recommend that users provide whichever sugar solution works best for them and their ants. Ants will typically consume any sugar source they encounter without much discrimination. This doesn’t mean that every sugar solution will get the same acceptance across our three measurement standards (see the previous question). But it does mean there is a wide range of acceptable solutions.
However, it’s important to understand that Sunburst Ant Nectar consists mainly of sugar, water, and sodium and potassium salts. All of these work synergistically to ensure ants are attracted to Sunburst, whether they’re seeking carbohydrates for raw energy or the electrolytes needed for proper brain and muscle function. The variety of ingredients even attracts ant species that do not normally prefer sugar solutions, such as predatory ants (Ponerinae), harvesters, and even leaf-cutters. The ratio of ingredients is vitally important, and we take great care to manufacture each batch to the same specifications with rigor.
Many users falsely believe they should offer a variety of sugars to ants in addition to Sunburst. They think variety is “healthy” or “nutritious.” According to the scientific literature, there are no known health benefits for ants from consuming different types of carbohydrates. Ants break down any common form of sugar to produce the same result: energy. And because most commercial forms of sugar are chemically identical (whether sucrose, fructose, or glucose), offering other forms of carbohydrate alongside Sunburst will only create redundancy and increase waste. Unless a user is troubleshooting, they should provide only one sugar solution at a time.
The only exception is plain, unsweetened water. We’ve found that captive ants commonly lack multiple access points to clean water, as they would experience in the wild. While ants can live for many months without proper feeding, they will die from lack of water within hours or days. Dehydrated ants will strongly seek water sources and may be less receptive to Sunburst because it does not contain all the water ants need to survive. That’s why we also recommend diluting Sunburst Ant Nectar with additional water, especially in hot or dry climates.
How would you like Sunburst to look in a few years?
Today, Sunburst is positioned similarly to a product like Coca-Cola—consider how many people get upset when Coca-Cola announces a major change to its best-selling product! Many of our customers have been buying Sunburst for years. And because Sunburst works so well for so many people, it’s become increasingly difficult to make major changes.
We’ve done a great deal of research into more exotic forms of sugar such as melezitose, which is produced exclusively by aphids and other sap-sucking insects. We’ve also studied the possibility of incorporating additional types of trace elements to make the product healthier and promote growth. However, much more research is needed to understand which micronutrients captive ants may lack, while also avoiding the potentially negative consequences of incorporating them into Sunburst.
Do you recommend it during the founding stage or when the colony is mature?
Sunburst can be offered as soon as a claustral queen gets her first nanitic workers, or immediately to semiclaustral queens. It’s especially important for founding colonies because the queen has exhausted all her stored energy reserves, so a reliable carbohydrate source can mean the difference between success and failure.
For mature colonies, we offer larger bottles that are more economical. Many customers have reported vigorous colony growth on a healthy diet of “Sunburst and neglect” for many months, with little to no protein.
Conclusion
Over the years, Sunburst has been a huge help to many ant keepers: a solution that works, has been tested and refined for years, with the goal of providing a safe, stable, and efficient option for our little ants. This makes Sunburst the most widespread and reliable liquid on the market.
Below you’ll find our customers’ opinions on Sunburst. Have you tried it yet? Leave a comment :)
