Ask HN: Can an ant colony be trained?

I have a colony of ants that eats anything left around. We have an agreement of kinds - I don't mind them in the house and I try to intermittently bang things around their meal of the day, to warn of an incoming could-be massacre.

They seem to respond well to this, leaving in a scurried beeline the way the came. There are some casualties unfortunately, but relatively little.

Is there some way I can let the colony explicitly know danger is imminent? Perhaps a scent I can place prior to major daily disruptions which would train the colony to retreat upon such an encounter.

What are the environmental inputs to a colony, and can they be trained to recognise these input patterns?