Don’t feel sorry for the ants, because ones like them were biting me way before I decided to experiment.
I took advantage of conditions to experiment on a clump of ants floating on the flood waters. I mixed about a teaspoon of dish soap in a half cup of water. Ants float in masses on water to survive if they can. I decided to see if the mass floated when water surface tension is broken. At first I did the trick of one drop of the soap solution on the water a good 6 inches away, to propel them through the water. That was half a minutes entertainment. Then I did the main experiment to see if they could stay floating without water tension. I poured some soap solution near the ants, but not causing waves. they sank to the bottom of the water. They started to break up then into smaller groups, while single ants swam to the surface and grouped on the way up. Small brown ants can swim to get to the surface of the water where they will form a floating mass again. They may make themselves more buoyant by gathering small amounts of air too. I really didn’t have a magnifier or time to check that out.