Pest Control St. Louis

It is about this occasion of year that folks start seeing insects wandering around inside their houses. One of the more evident of these insects is the carpenter ant.

These chunky black ( sometimes red and black) ants can vary from one-quarter inch for worker ants up to three-quarters of an inch for the queen. Like all species of ants, carpenter ants have a constricted hourglass waist and elbowed antennae. These traits distinguish them from the thick-waisted termites with their straight antennae. Ants are closely linked to bees, wasps, and sawflies.

Carpenter ants share at least one annoying addiction with termites. They construct extensive nests in timber, including logs, stumps, tree trunks, telephone poles, and, regrettably, buildings. Nests are usually begun in deteriorating timber that has been exposed to moisture. Often, the colony will extend its nest to adjacent, sound wood.

The colonies of carpenter ants are frequently long lived. A single fertilized queen founds each colony. She establishes a nesting site in a cavity in wood. She then rears her first brood of workers, feeding them salivary secretions. She does not leave the nest nor feed herself throughout this period. The workers who are reared first assume the job of gathering food with which to feed the younger larvae. As the food supply gets to be more constant, the colony population grows very rapidly. A colony does not reach maturity and become proficient at producing young queens and males until it comprises 2,000 or more workers. It may take a colony from three to six years or longer to reach this stage. Annually thereafter, the colony will carry on produce winged queens and males, which leave their nest and conduct mating flights in the spring and summer.

While termites actually eat and digest timber, carpenter ants simply chew and tunnel through it to build their homes. Carpenter ants rarely cause structural damage to buildings, although they can lead to significant damage over a timescale of years because nests are so long lived. Damage by carpenter ants can leave household structural timber ready to accept fungus, rots, and several varieties of decay. Some recent evidence indicates that they can likewise cause broad harm to foam insulation. If faced with chewing through hard wood or soft insulating material to constructor your nest, which would you choose?

Finding carpenter ants indoors in the wintertime is a signal that they're nesting somewhere within the walls or floors of the building. This is as a result of the truth that carpenter ants, like all insects, are cold blooded. Ants active in the winter has to be originating from a warmed source. Although the air temperature outside is freezing cold, heat from the sun or your furnace or timber stove may warm your home walls and stir overwintering ants to activity. Ants located in the spring and summer are frequently invaders wandering in from outdoors searching for food or drink. In the spring, carpenter ants go through a mass-mating or swarming behavior. During this moment carpenter ants raid houses searching for sweets, because one of their normal sources of sugar, the sweet honeydew from aphids, is not accessible until the weather warms up.

The critical aspect in carpenter ant control is treating the nesting area. Locating the nest site is very seldom easy and there are times it might be hopeless to locate the nest. The most probable sources of carpenter ants are window and door frames and sills, shower and tub enclosure walls, and kitchen and bath plumbing walls.

One of the goals of Integrated Pest Management and a reason we encourage carpenter control by direct nest therapy is to limit the quantity of pesticide applied. Frequently, we can find the ants to assist with the treatment.

Their zest for sweets can be their downfall. One of the most efficient ways to control carpenter ants is to set out poison baits. Attracted to the sweet taste, the worker ants collect the bait and bring it back to the colony, where they share it with the developing larvae and the queen.

It may be important to be aware what kind of ant you are coping with since some ant species prefer different foods. Baits are formulated to work with certain species and will most likely specify which ones on the label.