We share the world with lots of living things. Some of them share our homes, like cats, dogs, fish, and even ferrets. However, others we’d rather not have in our kitchens, bathrooms, and bedrooms: centipedes, roaches… and ants. Carpenter ants in particular are problematic because they damage wood and, by extension, houses and buildings. We’ll teach you how to identify if they’ve taken up residence in your home and how to remove them.
Carpenter ants are larger than an average ant, ranging from 6 mm to 25 mm long (anywhere from a stack of three nickels to slightly bigger than the diameter of one). They live in colonies much like bees do with one or more queens, several others that reproduce, and tens of thousands of sterile female workers.
Well, they look like other ants in that they have antennae, six legs, and three distinct parts to their forms: a head, body, and thorax. However, carpenter ant identification is fairly easy because they come in two different colours: black (darkish brown really) and red (darkish brown with a reddish-brown upper body).
Their antennae are also bent in the middle and can look a bit like a jointed set of bull’s horns (if you can get one to stand still). They can have wings if you catch them during their mating times. One other feature that sets them apart from most other ants is that they bite. Not hard, mind you, but enough to notice.
For starters, carpenter ants don’t actually eat the wood they burrow through: they throw it out of their nests. So, if you have them in your house, chances are you’ll see the sawdust they leave behind. Termites also differ from carpenter ants by being thicker and lighter in colour, as well as having straight antennae. Finally, carpenter ants build their colonies by burrowing into wood and digging tunnels much longer than those created by termites. If you open up a piece of wood that you think has been infested, look at the size of the galleries to determine which insect has taken up residence.
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