Some ants are merely annoying, while others can be a real concern. You want to avoid certain species of ants living in your house or garden, including carpenter ants. We provide information to aid you in locating and how to get rid of carpenter ants infestation.
What Are Carpenter Ants?
Carpenter ants (Camponotus species) are named for their propensity for digging. Both indoors and outdoors, these ants create nests in wood. While they remove wood as they tunnel, they don’t consume it. These ants instead eat plant juices, honeydew, insects, meat, and sweets crumbs.
How Do You Identify Carpenter Ants?
Carpenter ants range in size and colour depending on the species. They typically fall between ½ʺ-5/8ʺ in size. Although most species are black, some are brown and occasionally have a reddish tint.
They have two sets of wings, and their waist is constricted. The front set of wings is longer than the back pair. Large mandibles of carpenter ants aid in their ability to dig tunnels.
What Areas Are Home to Carpenter Ants?
You can find carpenter ants in every state, especially in the USA. They use wooden things to build their nests. Usually, they create their nests out of rotting or wet wood. The wood that other pests have harmed will likewise be on their radar.
These ants may shift to dry wood once they start tunneling. They build their nests outside in trees, logs, and roots. They will be in a room with damp or broken wood if they are in your house.
What Causes Carpenter Ants To Appear In My House?
The majority of the time, there is a cause why pests invade your home. Here are some possible causes of carpenter ants invading your house.
Moisture Damage: Carpenter ants favour wet or decaying wood. There is a strong likelihood that moisture damage is prevalent if you have a carpenter ant infestation.
These ants can be searching your home for food while they forage. Worker ants venture outside the nest, searching for food sources, which they subsequently bring into the nest to share with the colony.
Unfortunately, carpenter ants can already be inside your house because their nest is someplace nearby in your house or garden.
Tips For Getting Rid Of Carpenter Ants
1. Replace Or Fix Damaged Wood
Checking your home for wet, moist, or decaying wood is the first step in getting rid of carpenter ants and keeping them away in the future. If leaks are the source of the moisture, fix them. If carpenter ants’ nests have damaged the wood, replace them.
Examine the regions around your house and remove any tree stumps or rotten wood. One of those pieces of wood can be the home of the carpenter ants’ main colony.
Trim any bushes or trees with branches hanging close to your external walls. Carpenter ants might use these to enter the house.
2. Place Ant-baiting Stations
Utilise boric acid in a dry powder form to create bait stations where you’ve observed carpenter ant activity or where ants are probably moving around, such as around sinks, in cabinets close to your dishwashing, in restrooms, or along walls. The powder can be left in a small mound or used to dust the surroundings.
Boric acid powder coats the legs and bodies of worker ants when they step on it. During self-grooming, the ants consume the powder, which poisons them. The powdered ant might disseminate it to other ants by returning to its nest and bringing it there.
If you know where the colony is, you can drill a few tiny holes, each an eighth of an inch wide, and then immediately inject some boric acid into the wood to cover part of the ant tunnels.
3. Foam Aerosol Can Be Used
In addition to using boric acid as bait, you can spray aerosol foams in your home’s walls, floorboards, cupboards, window frames, and entryways to fill in gaps and crevices. Carpenter ants are poisoned when they touch the foamy fluid, which causes them to infect the colony.
3. Infuse Your Home With Spray
Carpenter ants usually have a parent colony in a piece of wood close to your property and invade your house when looking for a fresh supply of food and water. They could build satellite nests in your home in wet wood once inside.
Spray a repelling insecticide solution containing substances like carbaryl, diazinon, or chlorpyrifos all around your property to prevent entrance from being gained. The pesticide may also be applied to nests found close to the house in stumps or logs.
On A Wrap
With carpenter ants, time is of the essence. If you decide to use a do-it-yourself (DIY) solution, you’ll need to thoroughly treat your house with aerosol, spray, and bait stations and fix any damage that has already occurred.
Choose highly rated companies offering professional products and treatments to reduce carpenter ant infestations and prevent future damage to your property if you have a more serious infestation.
Also read: The Differences Between Standard Cleaning and Deep Cleaning
