The honey produced by Australian honeypot ants has antibacterial and antifungal properties, researchers have found, in a discovery that brings western science up to speed with Indigenous knowledge.
The Australian honeypot ant, Camponotus inflatus, has been used by First Nations people as a bush food and in traditional medicine for thousands of years, including to treat colds and sore throats.
The species is mainly found in desert areas in Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
Specialised worker ants, known as repletes, are overfed nectar by other ants and produce honey that engorges their abdomens to the size of small, amber marbles. Taking on sacrificial roles as “living pantries”, they hang off the roofs of their nests and regurgitate the honey during times of food scarcity.
Analysing the properties of the honey, Australian researchers have found that it is highly effective against Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, commonly known as golden staph.
The scientists found the ant honey was equally effective against golden staph as manuka honey, and more effective than jarrah honey, which are both produced by honeybees.
“It was quite amazing that the activity of the honey was so specific against some pathogens and not others,” said the study’s co-author, Dr Kenya Fernandes, of the University of Sydney. “The honey was really active against some of the fungi that we consider to be really tough and really hard to kill, like Aspergillus and Cryptococcus.”
“Cryptococcus is found in trees, so that’s something that the worker ants might encounter … and Aspergillus is found in hot, dry, arid, desert soils,” she said. “The activity of the honey seemed to really align with … what the ants encounter in their environment.”
The ant honey’s antimicrobial effects work through a different mechanism to manuka honey, which contains a compound called methylglyoxal, and jarrah honey, which works via hydrogen peroxide.
The researchers speculate that a “unique ant-derived antimicrobial peptide” gives the honey its properties, but further research was needed to confirm this, Fernandes said.
The team is unsure why the honey works against golden staph, which is typically considered to be a human pathogen that lives on the skin and can result in life-threatening infections.
“Given that the honey is such a precious resource, and it’s also something that has a lot of cultural significance to Indigenous people, it’s not really the kind of thing where you’re going to be able to take the honey directly and apply it for any kind of clinical use,” Fernandes said.
Researchers hope instead to identify new compounds within the honey that could be further developed into antimicrobial treatments.
“Western medicine seems to play catch up with traditional medicine,” said Danny Ulrich from the Tjupan language group, who runs Goldfields Honey Ant Tours with his mother Edie Ulrich and auntie Marjorie Stubbs.
Ulrich’s family sourced the honeypot ants for the study. Nests are often found at the base of mulga trees, he said.
Gathering honeypot ants has been a tradition in his family dating back generations. “It’s traditionally only the women that dig for the honey ants,” Ulrich said. “You can use it for sore throats; you can use it topically for ointment on wounds.”
For sustainability, ants are only taken from a couple of chambers within a nest at a time. “It might be a year or more before we go back there to that same nest,” he said.
Ulrich describes the ant honey as similar to maple syrup in consistency, less sweet and thick than bee honey, with “a very slight tangy taste to it”. As a sweet treat, he says it is best enjoyed with fresh damper, butter and apricot jam.
The research was published in the journal PeerJ.
