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Carpenter Ants

October 15th, 2008 Posted in Ants & Roaches, Wood Damaging Pests

You may love handcrafted furniture, but carpenter ants won’t build you any. In fact, they’d rather make homes in it. So, how can you make sure they don’t ruin your prized woodworking?

This article will cover:

What are carpenter ants?

Carpenter ants are a type of ant that ranges from 1/4″ to 1″ long. Distinct characteristics include burrowing in wood, which is how they got their name. They burrow (like digging) to make nests within wood.

Unlike termites, carpenter ants do not eat the wood. Rather, they damage wood by hollowing it out for nesting, creating galleries that have a smooth, sandpaper appearance.

Curious about termites? Watch the following video about them entering and damaging a home:

Where they live:

Carpenter ants live in wood and tear through it until it gets very weak and if left unchecked can cause severe damage to a home.

While carpenter ants can live in either dry or moist wood, they prefer wood that is moist. So they tend to nest in high moisture areas around a home such as bathrooms, kitchens, window and door frames, etc.

What do they eat?

Instead of wood they like to eat sweet things, or whatever is within their reach for food. Their favorite food is honeydew, which is a sweet liquid secreted by aphids and other scale insects, like ground pearls.

Sometimes, carpenter ants will travel up to 100 yards for food.

Life Cycle:

Carpenter ants go from egg to larva to pupa, and then develop into worker ants. If they are queens, this life cycle is the same in the beginning, but ends differently with them being the breeder of the colony. The winged queen may be as large as 1 inch in size; they lose their wings when they find a nesting site.

They usually swarm in the spring, which is when winged carpenter ant reproductives emerge from the nest to start new nests.

If you see one of these swarms within your home, this is a sure sign that you have an infestation.

How do carpenter ants get in your home in the first place? Watch and find out:

Carpenter ants are mostly nocturnal creatures, doing all of their work at night, and in spring and summer. Their activity slows down in colder weather as they find it hard to survive in the fall and winter seasons.

Winged carpenter ants can be distinguished from winged termites by their larger size, the shape of their antenna (elbowed vs. straight), their waist (slender/pinched vs. broad) and their wings (one pair shorter than the other vs. all wings of equal size)

Four Types of Carpenter Ants

1. Black Carpenter Ants
   • All black in color
   • About ¼-5/8 inches long
   • Most common of the carpenter ants
   • Seen in most regions and landscapes
2. Red Carpenter Ant
   • Red-orange head and thorax
   • Black abdomen
   • A little smaller than black carpenter ant
   • Prevalent in spring and summer
   • Have been seen in warm spells in the winter
3. Hawaiian Carpenter Ant
   • Black-orange head
   • Orange thorax
   • Black abdomen
   • Smaller than red carpenter ants
   • Most common in Hawaii
4. Florida Carpenter Ant
   • Red head
   • Yellow thorax
   • Black abdomen
   • Mostly seen in Florida, because of the warm temperature.

The Florida carpenter ant is one of the many species that can bite and release a painful acid, called formic acid. This can cause harmful injuries to the eyes and burn the skin.

What kind of damage do these ants cause?

If not disturbed, these ants cause damage. Although they’re small, they’ve got a big bite.

The extent of their damage depends on:

1. How many nests are present within a home (carpenter ants are known to have several nests in close proximity of one another)
2. How large the nests are

In general, the damage caused by carpenter ants is not as serious as that from termites, since termites actually eat wood and carpenter ants do not.

You have a carpenter ant problem if…

1. You see a lot of large black ants in and around your home.
2. You notice accumulations of shredded fragments of wood (coarse sawdust) in and around your home.
3. You hear a “rustling noise” in your walls.
4. You hear a hollow sound in wood when you tap it with a blunt screwdriver.

How To Get Rid Of Carpenter Ants

There are many ways to get rid of carpenter ants that include home remedies and insecticides.

To start, watch the following clip of a pest control expert discussing carpenter ant control:

A few home remedies include:

• Washing everything near their environments with peppermint soap
• Planting marigolds around your house
• Leaving lavender oil around their points of entry

Some insecticides that get rid of carpenter ants include:

• Boric acid
• Baits
• Traps

You can also follow them at night to track down their nests to apply boric acid or other insecticidal ant dusts into their homes. The stalking should be done at night because most of their foraging is done between sunset and midnight during spring and summer.

EcoSMART

A sure fire way to get rid of carpenter ants is to use an organic insecticide, like EcoSMART Ant and Roach Spray.

I have used this in my home, so I can say that it gets rid of ants and other similar insects. This product leaves a fairly good smell behind, too, because this natural insecticide is made from all organic products, like peppermint.

The product alleviates all worries of harming children and pets, because EcoSMART is okay to use around humans, animals, and the environment.

Chelsea Roeser