One almost disaster gives me the knowledge to fix a real disaster

A while back I tried to get a queen to move her brood out of a moldy test tube.  I tried light and it did nothing.  I applied heat, but didn't watch closely enough.  The heat created condensation, and when I came back, it appeared that the queen had drowned.  I felt horrible!  I put her on my table, to dispose of later.  When I came back a few hours later, she was busy cleaning her larvae, looking no worse for wear.  Lesson learned, be very careful with heat, and ants don't drown very easily.

Well last night I gave a little honey to a queen with two nantics that looked ready to eat.  I thought I gave them a reasonable amount, but clearly I was wrong!  The next day I found the two workers literally glued to themselves, antenna glued to their heads, their legs gummed up and stuck to their bodies.  Seriously bad mistake!  They had tracked honey everywhere.  The queen still looked fine, and three more pupae looked okay, but possibly a little stuck in some honey.  I felt horrible, especially seeing the two workers still alive, but clearly suffering.  A couple hours later the situation looked even more dire, with one worker not moving at all, and the other twitching, antennae still stuck firmly to it's head.  What to do?  When I am sticky I take a bath.  My previous experience with the queen I thought I had drowned combined with some reading that told me that while ants will drown, they can actually close their spiracles for a time to prevent water entering allowing them to survive submerged for a awhile.  I felt that I didn't have much to lose.  I took a syringe and carefully flooded the test tube with water, and then drained it out again.  The queen struggled for a bit, and then everybody just looked dead.  An hour later, everybody looked completely fine!  They are very busy grooming themselves and each other, and they look no worse for wear, antennas wriggling happily in the air.  I don't know about the state of the pupae, won't know that for awhile probably.  There might also be some residual damage to the queen and the two workers, but so far so good.

Lots of lessons learned!  Be careful with the honey, you can always add more, but it is much harder to take away if you add too much.