Carpenter Ants
It is about this period of year that folks start seeing insects wandering around inside their houses. One of the more noticeable of these insects is the carpenter ant.
These chunky black ( sometimes red and black) ants can range from one-quarter inch for worker ants up to three-fourths of an inch for the queen. Like all types of ants, carpenter ants have a constricted hourglass waist and elbowed antennae. These characteristics distinguish them from the thick-waisted termites with their straight antennae. Ants are closely related to bees, wasps, and sawflies.
Carpenter ants share with just one annoying addiction with termites. They construct encompassing nests in timber, including logs, stumps, tree trunks, telephone poles, and, unfortunately, buildings. Nests are usually begun in deteriorating wood that has been exposed to moisture. Often, the colony will extend its nest to adjacent, sound wood.
The colonies of carpenter ants are oftentimes long lived. A single fertilized queen founds each colony. She establishes a nesting site in a cavity in wood. She then rears her first breed of workers, giving them food to eat salivary secretions. She does not leave the nest nor feed herself throughout this period. The workers who are reared first assume the chore 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 capable of producing young queens and males until it incorporates 2,000 or more workers. It could take a colony from 3 to 6 years or longer to reach this stage. Every year thereafter, the colony will continue to 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 seldom cause structural harm to buildings, although they can cause significant damage over a period of years because nests are so long lived. Damage by carpenter ants can leave household structural wood ready to accept fungus, rots, and other types of decay. Some recent evidence indicates that they can likewise cause encompassing damage to foam insulation. If faced with chewing through hard timber or soft insulating material to build your nest, which would you prefer?
Finding carpenter ants indoors in the wintertime is a signal that they are nesting somewhere within the walls or floors of the building. This is because of the fact that carpenter ants, like all insects, are cold blooded. Ants active in the winter has to be originating from a warmed source. Even though the air temperature outside is very cold, heat from the sun or your furnace or wood stove may warm your property walls and stir overwintering ants to activity. Ants found in the spring and summer are oftentimes invaders wandering in from outdoors looking for food or drink. In the spring, carpenter ants go through a mass-mating or swarming behavior. During this moment carpenter ants raid houses looking 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 perhaps it is hopeless to locate the nest. The most likely sources of carpenter ants are window and door frames and sills, shower and tub enclosure walls, and kitchen and bath plumbing walls.
One or more of the goals of Integrated Pest Management and one reason we encourage carpenter control by direct nest therapy is to limit the volume of pesticide applied. Frequently, we can acquire the ants to assist with the treatment.
Their zest for sweets may be their downfall. One of the most effective 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 know what kind of ant you are managing since some ant species prefer different foods. Baits are formulated to work on certain species and will most likely specify which ones on the label.