Facing a carpenter ant infestation? You need professional help!

What does the name “carpenter ant” mean to you? If you’re like many, you’re probably thinking of them in the same way that you might think of termites. And it makes sense, since termites are probably a much more commonly known insect, known specifically for consuming wood and causing potentially billions of dollars in damage to people’s homes, businesses, and building materials.

In fact, carpenter ants and termites are altogether different creatures. Termites feed on wood, whereas carpenter ants are incapable of digesting wood. The reason that carpenter ants tunnel through wood is because they are actually creating safe nesting sites for their colony. 

While carpenter ants aren’t necessarily known to cause quite as much damage as termites can, they can nonetheless cause significant damage to homes and businesses, and if you suspect that you’re facing a carpenter ant infestation then you should call upon professional pest control services, and you should do it as soon as possible. 

Why? Well, for a number of reasons. One important one being…

Carpenter ants are social insects

This doesn’t mean that carpenter ants are looking for friendship, this means that, unlike spiders (who are typically solitary arachnids), carpenter ants live in colonies. These colonies will consist of (sometimes multiple) queens, workers, males, and their larvae. 

Each ant has a very specific job, and each one of those jobs is centered on growing the colony. Queens communicate with workers and the rest of the colony by emitting pheromones, and provide direction about things like where nests should be built. Naturally, queens also mate with the males and lay eggs so that more and more ants can hatch and fulfill their own duties in service to the colony. 

Males have literally one job: To mate with the queen. That’s it. Once they do so, they die shortly thereafter. New males are born and the cycle continues. 

Workers have a much more comprehensive set of duties. Depending on their size, they’re gathering and distributing food, protecting the nest, and responsible for other important tasks, including the creation of the elaborate tunnel systems, called galleries. 

Galleries will connect to the nest, and in those cases where colonies grow quite large in size, these galleries might connect to multiple nests, with a queen reigning over each respective kingdom. These queens, as is common, are protective of their nests and can become territorial and aggressive if they sense that other queens are encroaching on their space. 

Carpenter ants are quite meticulous when it comes to the development of their galleries. These tunnels are kept impeccably clean, and this is actually one of the ways in which carpenter ants make their presence known. 

The ants will make small holes in the sides of their galleries, pushing sawdust and other debris outside the tunnels, leaving evidence of their infestation outside of the wood they’re destroying. 

Carpenter ants prefer moist environments and decaying wood 

Does your home or property show signs of rotting or decaying wood? Are you seeing small bits of wood or a very fine sawdust-like material outside of the small holes where they’re likely entering the wood? If so, then it’s very likely that you do have a carpenter ant infestation. 

The longer that you let this situation go on for, the larger the colony is going to grow, and the worse the damage to the wood will become. Let it go for too long, and you could be facing some serious problems, like structural damage. 

It’s unusual that the carpenter ant infestation started in your house. Presumably, what’s made its way into your home is a satellite colony connected to a much larger colony outside the home. Again, this just reinforces the need for you to call upon professional pest control services to address the problem. 

Consider year-round pest control for the best possible results

The majority of our new customers choose our year-round pest control services, called the Home Protection Plan. The Home Protection Plan is a quarterly applied pest control treatment plan that is designed to address the seasonality of pests. They live on a schedule, so your pest control treatments should, too!

Depending on your needs, we’ll create a treatment plan that deals directly with your carpenter ants and whatever other pests you might be facing throughout the year. 

Four times a year, we’ll come to your home to apply commercial grade products to any identifiable infestations. If your needs only consist of pests that are outside the house, then you don’t even need to be home for us to provide our services, if that’s an arrangement you’re comfortable with. We’ll simply do our work, provide you a detailed overview of services rendered, and provide you with a physical and digital copy outlining our observations and applications of pest control products. 

Pest infestations are disruptive, but we believe that pest control should be anything but. We’re here to give you the peace of mind that you deserve through our work. And we’re so committed to that idea that if pests return in between your regularly scheduled treatments, we’ll come back, free of charge, for as many times as it takes to rid your home of the offending pests. 

Looking for pest control with commitment? That’s Aspen! Contact us today for your consultation!