Can I Eat This: crystallized honey with crunchy ant topping

January 14, 2024 10:44 AM

Are ant remnants poison?

My very expensive jar of wildflower honey got tiny fucking ants (in the middle of winter, wtf) and my teenage children decided to fix the AARGH ANTS!! problem by freezing the whole jar.

So now a lot of the honey is crystallized, and there's frozen (dead?) ants stuck to the rim of the jar and I can visually see some of these fuckers suspended in liquid honey. It's not a whole lot, say a couple of dozen total including on the rim.

At this moment my outrage is greater than my squick. I paid $25 for the jar, goddamn it, I don't want to throw it away! Can I mix this honey into my tea and strain the dead ant carcasses out prior to drinking? Are there poisonous/venomous ant varieties one should not try this with?

If it matters, these are whisper-thin tiiiiiiiny reddish ants that look like they will float away if I breathe on them (but not, of course, while they're suspended in the amber sludge that is frozen honey).

posted by MiraK to Food & Drink (29 answers total)

Hun. theres bugs in your food, no.
posted by june_dodecahedron at 11:14 AM on January 14 [11 favorites]

Without realizing it, you probably already accidentally consume a lot of bugs that get mixed in with your food (like in the flour that goes into making bread). I don't think the ants are poisonous. I would remove the dead ants by whatever method seems easiest. I wouldn't advocate straining them out of your tea, though. Can you just use a spoon to remove them from the honey directly, after the honey has thawed? You might end up throwing away a little honey in the process, but that's the price you gotta pay.
posted by alex1965 at 11:25 AM on January 14 [12 favorites]

Ants have a very significant "flavor". it's nasty.

but, I would scrape out the ants, and rock and roll.
posted by Windopaene at 11:33 AM on January 14 [15 favorites]

Many ants are edible, and in fact are eaten regularly in many parts of the world. They're a good source of protein and have different flavours even. The ones you don't want to eat are poisonous ones, like jumping jack ants or fire ants.

Without being able to conclusively identify the ants in your honey, though, it's safest to pick them out before adding to your tea. A pointy chopstick or toothpick will help preserve more of the honey. I wouldn't stir it into the tea and then strain because that could infuse some extra ant flavour which could be unpleasantly bitter.
posted by Athanassiel at 11:49 AM on January 14 [6 favorites]

I would gently reliquefy the honey (warm the jar in hot water; there is also a way to do this in a microwave but I don't know what it is) then strain the ants out when it's liquid. It will recrystallize but then there won't be ants.

Or, yes, brew your tea, melt in the honey with ants, then strain through a tea strainer to capture the ants. That would work too.

Most people already regularly eat incidental bugs and bug parts in cereal, flour, etc. You can't worry about that stuff. But, if you have a chance to remove ants, do it, you're worth it.
posted by blnkfrnk at 12:05 PM on January 14 [2 favorites]

I've eaten ants. they have a very sharp taste. pick or strain them out and you'll be fine.
posted by an opinicus at 12:25 PM on January 14 [5 favorites]

I would be too grossed out to do it myself, but, with outrage outweighing squick, I would remove the rim/surface ants while the honey is crystallized (to reduce the likelihood of bits getting away from you into the body of the jar), then warm gently (perhaps using a double boiler, even) and pick out. If you're lucky, most of them will rise to the top when the honey "melts." Hopefully you won't end up with ant-flavor-infused honey; do a small test after removal and before you use it for anything.

I strongly recommend you investigate the rest of your pantry for other infestations. Especially those shelves higher than eye-level.
posted by praemunire at 1:01 PM on January 14 [2 favorites]

There are many places where ants are eaten on purpose, but whether or not these particular ants are poisonous is the question. I would say the odds are low and if the taste isn’t spoiled go ahead and eat the honey.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 1:47 PM on January 14

Georg would like a word.

My family massively disagrees with my thoughts. But, a jar of honey at trader joe's is like $6, so, I get their opinions.
posted by Windopaene at 1:55 PM on January 14 [1 favorite]

Indoor spiders, you are dead.
Outdoor spiders, your name is Georg and I will try and chill with you.

Ants have that formic acid thing going on. And I don't know how that would diffuse into your honey. Disruptive new Honey business thing!!!

people do eat ants, so, unless it's a "ugh, fucking bugs" thing, which I can appreciate, I still say scrape and go.
posted by Windopaene at 2:06 PM on January 14 [2 favorites]

Best answer: AFAIK there are no ant species that are poisonous to eat. Very tiny ants indoors in winter sound to me like pharoah ants which are not venomous either. Your best bet, if you don't mind eating a few ant bits, would be to pick all you can from the frozen honey and then warm and strain it as praemunire says. And, as they also say, do check for further infestation. If they are pharoah ants the little bastards get everywhere, not just in sweet stuff.
posted by Fuchsoid at 2:36 PM on January 14 [9 favorites]

No, you can't eat it, because your clever, creative kids will learn freezing insect-contaminated foods for later noshing is okay.
Use the jar in a craft project, buy more honey and store it in a Zip-Lock, and do check the rest of the shelves for infestation.
posted by Iris Gambol at 3:04 PM on January 14 [1 favorite]

I would totally scrape off the ants and maybe the top layer of honey, on a $25 jar of fancy wildflower honey.
posted by leahwrenn at 3:20 PM on January 14 [8 favorites]

$25? Scrape and enjoy! I am the sort of person who shrugs and eats my cereal with a stray ant in it because it’s all granola anyway. I have eaten a lot of ants by accident and occasionally on purpose and they’re fine, you will be fine. In water they give a sharp unpleasant flavour but for honey, meh.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 3:45 PM on January 14 [4 favorites]

I wouldn’t even think about this one. I’d pick the ants out, either from the honey or when they float to the top of the cup of tea. No question. They’re just ants. Maybe I like camping too much.
posted by Cuke at 4:21 PM on January 14 [4 favorites]

Scrape and/or strain. Good honey is a miracle, don't waste it just because a few ants happen to agree.
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:24 PM on January 14 [1 favorite]

I have eaten ants on purpose. I don’t see an issue with this. I think you’re fine, but I would scrape out the ants rather than heating/liquefying and straining as I think that would minimize the formic acid flavor getting into your honey. (On the other hand you might get some new exciting form of hot honey that way?)
posted by music for skeletons at 5:11 PM on January 14 [3 favorites]

It is not like this is going to kill you but the subject line of this thread is describing garbage that lives in the trash.
posted by katiec at 7:30 PM on January 14

Gently warm the honey until runny. Do NOT microwave it! Once liquid-ish, pour it through a strainer into another container. The strainer should remove the ants.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:45 PM on January 14 [1 favorite]

If it's possible to scrape them off I would do that, just because I - like you - balk at the idea of throwing away expensive food, and because my Can I Eat It tendencies tend to be on the less cautious end of the scale anyway. If you DO go ahead and eat the honey I'm really interested to hear what method you end up using and how the honey fared!
posted by unicorn chaser at 12:41 AM on January 15 [1 favorite]

My parents taught me the proper name for occasional ants or midgies or bits of dirt or ash or other tiny food contaminants: "Campers' Privilege".

Ants are very small and honey has a high enough sugar concentration to make it a very inhospitable growth medium for such microorganisms as they might have trampled into it. Pick out your paltry two dozen and enjoy your delicious honey without fear.
posted by flabdablet at 4:07 AM on January 15 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: Readers, as of this morning, I have scraped.

I scraped the rim. I scraped all the ants I could see. In an excess of caution I also disposed of the top 1/4 of the honey in the jar, just in case the fucking ants were hiding inside the crystals up top. (I doubt these fuckers have the gumption to swim further down.)

I have now made tea and watched it carefully for ants floating to the top. None have, so far. As an erstwhile frequent camper myself, my level of squick towards ants in particular is on the low side, and all I needed to Eat This (honey, not ants) was someone to tell me it wasn't poison. Thank you for helping me save my stupidly expensive and very delicious honey!!
posted by MiraK at 5:04 AM on January 15 [13 favorites]

Best answer: I'm late to the conversation, but I'm an entomologist and I deal with bees and honey all the time. I would just pick the ants out and eat it. Honey is made by insects and is naturally antimicrobial. It won't go bad. It will just preserve the little ant carcasses until you pick them out. Honey usually is filtered to remove extraneous bits of wax, bee parts and whatnot before they package and sell it.
posted by fimbulvetr at 7:29 AM on January 15 [8 favorites]

There's an acid in ant bodies that produces a very sharp, nasty flavor and smell. I would remove them with a spoon and try to avoid crushing the bodies at all. I would be afraid that heating it would leach out the flavor into the rest of the honey. Even if the ants had consumed poison it would be inside the ants themselves and in the tiny amount that would be present it wouldn't hurt you. The worst case scenario is it tasting nasty. So if it tastes bad after that, I'd use it for something else- like ant bait.
posted by shesaysgo at 8:23 AM on January 15 [2 favorites]

Best answer: If you ever need to do this again, one of the ways hobby beekeepers filter honey is to gently warm it up and run it through cheesecloth. For one jar of honey, a hot water bath is the best way to warm it up, you don't want to cook it as that will change the honey. That should re-liquify the crystals as well.
posted by fimbulvetr at 11:53 AM on January 15 [1 favorite]

I just want to say that I'm impressed that this question was up for almost 24 hours before anyone pointed out that honey is made from bee spit, so "ew bugs" might not be the most powerful argument here.
posted by polecat at 2:35 PM on January 15 [8 favorites]

Not only are they all insects, bees and ants are both in the order Hymenoptera, suborder Apocrita (bees, ants and wasps)!
posted by fimbulvetr at 7:20 AM on January 16

Ants are just bees' little cousins. You know how many bees cavorted in that honey? Put the honey on the counter til the top layer melts. Scoop out the ants delicately (don't break their little ant bodies, crushed ants smell like formic acid which probably tastes bad too). Then eat some honey. Anyway, ants are edible. A bug person came to my workplace with ant candy and I felt bad for them and ate some. It wasn't delicious but I didn't die.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 4:11 PM on January 17 [1 favorite]

Like you, I had ants in my honey. I simply strained them out using a fine mesh strainer. My honey tasted fine. Since you have crystallised honey, just gently reliquify it in a pan of water. Once the honey is warmed and free-flowing, you can strain the ants very easily.
posted by jadepearl at 2:49 AM on January 18