My Top foods for Atta

[Acromyrmexbob]

1. Privet Hedge, Ligustrum Ovalifolium. Fantastic because its evergreen and the ants virtually never refuse it.
Caution (as with any food plant) lots of this grows beside the road. After a rain shower has finished and the water has dried up, go and look at your usual leaf source. If its covered in normally invisible pollution, at this time all of the black material will be concentrated at the tips of the leaves, showing you these leaves are dirty.
2. Orange Peel, the white bits! Can never go wrong with this.
If you offer the ants a choice between Orange Peel and something very wet, say Grapes, you can gain a lot of information about conditions within the colony by watching which one they take. If the fungus garden is too dry they will favour the grape and if its too wet they will gather the orange peel. An interesting test. A useful food now we in Europe are going into winter.
3. Brussel Sprouts. Not everyones favourite on the plate but a guaranteed friend when the snow is thick and you've got the food collecting woes! This is the one to choose if you are going away for a few days. They will work away at this, it generally will not go off and the ants are content to take this for a time.
4. Strawberry Willow Herb (Epilobium spp). If I was a herbivore, this is what I would eat. This is my personal favourite to feed the ants and they always thank me for doing it by emptying their plate! Its fast growing, its a week, it flowers and everything is popular from the leaves, the flowers and the stems. If you break the plant half way down then a week or so later there are dozens of new shoots. Life is good when there is Strawberry Willow Herb on the menu.
5. Bramble (Rubus fruticosus) or black berry. Its a prickly customer. I don't normally use it in the summer because there are plenty of other options but come winter and all of its buddies are gone, Bramble pricks become suddenly welcome. All year round Bramble is available and taken. A good one to have in reserve.

I will add more later but this section could become a real resource. I don't know about you but when I have a good few colonies to care for, what to feed them, especially in the winter, becomes something I spend a fair amount of time thinking about.