Ant Cows?

I was watering my beloved sweet corn 2 nights ago and saw them...APHIDS in the corn tassels. I sat in the light of the next morning and realized the ants...were farming the aphids on the corn I am farming. They were bringing aphids up the stalk of corn, not down. I'm in a quandary. Soap them off and possibly loose my pollinated corn, or let them eat the corn anyway and pray they don't spread. Living here, I have the ability to plant a second corn crop this month, so I have decided to coat the stalks of the corn not effected with non toxic Tangle-Foot. It's a sticky beeswax and plant resin compound that the ants will get stuck on as they are carrying the aphid crop up the stalk. They milk them. I swear to you. The aphids produce a 'honeydew substance', that the ants collect daily.

Here, read this from Wikipedia:
 Some species of ants "farm" aphids, protecting them on the plants they eat, eating the honeydew that the aphids release from the terminations of their alimentary canals. This is a "mutualistic relationship".
These "dairying ants" "milk" the aphids by stroking them with their antennae. Therefore, sometimes aphids are called "ant cows".
Some farming ant species gather and store the aphid eggs in their nests over the winter. In the spring, the ants carry the newly-hatched aphids back to the plants. Some species of dairying ants (such as the European yellow meadow ant, (Lasius flavus) manage large "herds" of aphids that feed on roots of plants in the ant colony. Queens that are leaving to start a new colony take an aphid egg to found a new herd of underground aphids in the new colony. These farming ants protect the aphids by fighting off aphid predators.


I love that corn like child, but the mad scientist in me thinks this too cool and I kind of have a weirdly driven need to watch this process in all the wonder it deserves. Ant cows. Wow.