The term ‘honeypot’ ant is a common name given to multiple genera of ants that are best known for the replete, or plerergate, members of their caste system. Repletes are sterile works that serve as food reserves for when other food sources are scarce. The repletes hang from the ‘ceiling’ in special chambers of the nest and are gorged with food to the point their abdomens become greatly distended with honey. When needed, other worker ants will gently stroke the antennae of the replete, getting it to regurgitate stored liquid in its crop. Honeypot ants have been used a food source for indigenous peoples in Southwest North America and Australia. In 2023, CollectA added a honeypot ant to its Little Wonders line. CollectA did not specifically market this ant at the genus level, but it almost certainly was modeled after the genus Myrmecocystus which occurs in arid regions of the western United States and Mexico.
I have to be honest, I wasn’t sure how to approach this review. There are some things about the figure that are very good, but there are others that could easy be improved upon. For starters, let’s discuss the size and scale. I’ll be using metrics for M. mexicanus, since it’s one of the best-studied species. An accurate scale is challenging to calculate, since the engorged abdomen is not as large as it should be in relation to the rest of the body (unless one assumes the figure does not represent a fully-engorged individual, which is possible). The body length of the figure is 5.0 cm, which would give it a scale of 16:6:1-7.1:1 for an unengorged worker (n=3-7 mm); the length of the abdomen on this toy suggests that despite being at least partially engorged, it is the same length as if it was not engorged. Using the size of the abdomen in an engorged replete as a metric (n=6-12 mm), the scale would come to 8.3:1-4.2:1. So, there does seem to be some overlap around 8:1-7:1 regardless of the degree of engorgement. For this figure to have represented a fully-engorged replete, the abdomen have to be nearly the size of a baseball (and I really wish CollectA would have made it that big)!!!
The rest of the body sans abdomen looks like a fairly generic ant, something one might find in a Toy Major collection or a bin set at a dollar store. In other words, there is nothing remarkable about it. It has the classic ant features, such as elbowed antennae, but if not for the engorged abdomen, there is nothing about the rest of the body that stands out as anything other than ‘ant’. The legs are splayed outward, all in the same length and direction (some variation here would have been nice).
The color of the body (minus the abdomen) is a solid matte black, except for the glossy eyes. The abdomen, however, is very nicely done. The base color of the abdomen is a translucent amber, and actually looks like it’s full of honey!!! The abdominal sclerites are a matte black similar to the rest of the body and there are cream-colored veins stretching across the sides of the abdomen. As generic as the first half of the body is, CollectA really did a great job ob the back half!
And here’s the abdomen photographed with backlighting:
Despite my nitpicks above about the relative scale and the generic features of the anterior part of the body, this figure comes highly recommended for anyone who likes to collect interesting taxa! I never engage in ‘wish list’ posts on the forums, but have secretly wished for a honeypot ant replete for years and am surprised it took this long to get one in toy form! Club Earth made a honeypot ant in their Ants and Termites collection, but it represents an alate (winged form) rather than a replete.
And with the Club Earth alate:
Great review! I ended up giving this figure 4 stars because of that unremarkable body, but that it is a honeypot ant is really cool. Not a high priority for me but I would like to own it eventually.