When I first started out beekeeping, my bees were getting mutilated and attacked by bull ants; it was quite a terrifying sight, to see my beloved honeybees setting up a wall formation of guard bees at the hive entrance against this large gang of bullants, who would constantly lash out and pile onto honeybees at any opportunity, seeing a line of ants walking around carrying beeheads and other parts. I quickly built stands and placed legs into sump oil, in order to protect the ants.
Now I build stands for every hive that I have. I've managed to stumble across numerous objects that I've used for makeshift stands and when to the time consuming, expensive route of building some stands as needed. One of these stands is set up at a site where the owner says they get a fair amount of ants there. I've discovered though, that there's no bull ants, there's just these little black sugar ants present. These are but a fraction of the size of the bullants, and don't seem as aggressive.
I've also saw that the oil trap at this site buggered up, the back legs had no oil in them meaning ants could freely walk up the stand, into the hive. However, they have not done so.
I'm left wondering; do I even need to take such protective measures against sugar ants? Can just sitting them off the ground via some bricks, be just as sufficient?