Carpenter Ants
Could Be Building A Home Inside Your Home
Carpenter ants get their name from their hollowing out galleries in wood as nests. They can do serious damage to buildings when they cut extensive galleries in structural wood. Although Carpenter ants do not sting, many are rather large and can cause a painful bite if disturbed. They can also give off formic acid, often directed to the spot they are biting.
The first sign of an infestation may be seeing several sizes of worker ants crawling along a counter top, or small piles of ragged "saw dust" mixed with dirt particles, fragments of insulation, and insect body parts. Each pile of debris is usually directly below a small hole in some wooden part of a cabinet, window sill, or structural part of the building.
Worker ants push the debris out of their galleries through the small holes. Another common sign, most often seen in Spring, is a swarm of winged reproductives emerging. These may fly to lights, and may be confused with termites.
There are nine species of Carpenter ants throughout the U.S., with as many as 4 or 5 species commonly seen in some places. The most widespread species are either black or brownish-red and black, but some species may be all orange-red in color. All species mainly attack wood which is, or has previously been, wet and has already been damaged by fungi. A mature colony may include 3,000 to 20,000 ants (depending on the species) and will be two to five years old before they produce their first swarm.
Even though these ants first invade wet, decayed wood, they soon begin expanding their smooth-walled galleries into sound wood. Nearly every Carpenter ant colony has two or more major sub-nests, with the queen and most reproduction in one "main" nest. That main nest is often outside in a rotten log, tree, stump, or post. Workers often forage as far as 100 meters from the nest. They mainly feed on sweets such as honeydew, plant sap, cereal grains, other insects, and even oily or fatty materials. Our food scraps and crumbs may be an ant banquet. Carpenter ants usually come into buildings through cracks around doors, windows, or through exterior holes for plumbing, electric wires, TV cables, or phone lines. They will also crawl along overhead wires, shrubs or tree limbs which touch the building far above the ground.
Carpenter ants can be hard to control. One must first determine whether the ants seen indoors have a nest in the structure or are merely foraging there from outside. It usually requires a trained professional to detect the tell-tale signs of typical Carpenter ant debris, gallery openings, foraging trails, or typical gallery cutting sounds. A Carpenter ant nest can sometimes be detected in a wall by a rustling sound in a void or in the wood, or by gently "sounding" the wood to detect hollowed-out areas. If they are only foraging from outside, they can be excluded by sealing, caulking or putting down a good physical or chemical barrier. Closing all holes for pipes or wires, and cutting back all trees and shrubs so they don’t touch the building can help. If Carpenter ants have established a nest in the wood of a structure, you will probably need the services of pest control professionals to help determine and implement an effective plan to control them and prevent re-infestation. This is especially true if any form of chemical control is needed.