Carpenter ants, while beneficial insects in forests, can be destructive and nuisance pests to any housing or commercial structure. Here you can learn 5 crazy facts about carpenter ants. We’ll also share how we treat for these pests.
If you’re looking for more information right away of how we treat for carpenter ants, or about how destructive carpenter ants can be, these resources may be helpful.
Table of Contents
5 Crazy Facts About Carpenter Ants
1. Carpenter ants are innovative.
Carpenter ants are also known as black ants in Minnesota. They are typically more hardy than termites, and therefore way more commonly found in Minnesota.
Carpenter ants take shortcuts around your yard. If you have fences, hoses, or anything else they can traverse to your home in search of food, they will travel along these “highways” to get to your home quicker.
This includes tree branches. Carpenter ants will often climb trees and follow the branches to roofs of homes. Keep this in mind the next time you inspect the inside and outside of your home for pest activity.
If you’re looking for signs of carpenter ants in house, chances are that if they are in your yard, they’ve made it in your house.
2. Carpenter ants are familial insects.
Carpenter ants forage the same paths. If you watched a carpenter ant colony, you would see that thousands of workers would traverse the same path to and from the point of food or wood. Once these black ants in Minnesota find a path that works, they keep it up until otherwise deterred. This is helpful to know when you’re looking for signs of carpenter ants in house or yard.
3. Carpenter ants are great at team work.
Carpenter ants will pass off food or building materials like wood shavings to one another with their mouths. You may, at times, see wood shavings in piles at your home, this is a great indicator of the signs of carpenter ants in house.
Did you know that carpenter ants actually knock their head into the wood upon being disturbed? If you are looking around for a carpenter ant colony, if you listen carefully and hear a thousand tiny knocks on a hard surface, it could be these ants being disturbed and alarming the colony of the disturbance.
Did you know a main carpenter ant colony can house more than 10,000 carpenter ants?
4. Carpenter ant colonies are cleverly constructed.
The main carpenter ant colonies are often located in dead trees, logs, telephone poles, or elsewhere, but they are often in higher moisture content areas.
Carpenter ants will often start a colony in decayed wood, but will extend galleries of the colony into sound wood. These black ants in Minnesota and Wisconsin are often smarter than people give them credit for.
Main colonies are built in humid areas. In fact, humidity levels are needed to be high for egg production, which makes summer in the Midwest the perfect time for high carpenter ant activity.
Satellite colonies are formed as the main colony grows.
It is important to know the signs of carpenter ants in house and yard because if an area of your home had a leak and the wood started to decay, carpenter ants will be attracted to that area and begin to build a colony.
5. Carpenter ants can be helpful.
Carpenter ants and their destructive abilities are extremely helpful when it comes to helping degrade dead trees in forests. Carpenter ants open up spaces within the dead tree so fungi and other wood destroying insects and organisms can help decompose the tree. The circle of life.
Carpenter ants in Minnesota are helpful to our ecosystem, though they can be destructive pests to our homes and businesses. Read on to learn how we treat for carpenter ants.
How We Treat for Carpenter Ants
Inspecting for these pests is key to catching them early. If you ever see any carpenter ants in your home, even just one or a few, there is a main colony within close enough distance to your home to concern the average homeowner.
But sometimes you don’t see them right away, because carpenter ants are primarily nocturnal insects, many don’t realize they have a carpenter ant issue until it has grown.
If you ever see any carpenter ants in your home during the day or night, or any wood shavings, give Done Right Pest Solutions a call for a free quote at 651-342-9489. While carpenter ants in Minnesota can be helpful, as you’ve learned, you may be interested in reading our other carpenter ant article for more tips on how to spot this devastating pest.
Rarely does a carpenter ant issue require interior treatment, even if ants are on the inside of the home. Interior inspection can be added on to the service for no additional charge, but an exterior treatment of the home or building’s foundation perimeter is all that is needed to stop these pests at the source.
Because any carpenter ant activity in your home is most likely a satellite colony, there is a larger colony in the yard or nearby that needs to be taken care of too. And this exterior treatment of the home can do both!
The exterior of the home is sprayed with a product that lasts between 2 and 3 months. It is a non-repellent, so the ants walk over top of the foundation as they come to and from your home. The product gets on their legs and they are able to transfer it to other ants.
That’s it? That’s it. Black ants in Minnesota are social insects. They touch each ant they come into contact with. This is how they communicate with one another, or sometimes they are transferring food or wood to other worker ants.
When they touch the other ant, the product is transferred to the other ant too. The product begins to attack their nervous system and they die in a couple of days. Over a couple of days, the product gets back to the queen of the colony.
Once the queen dies, the whole colony dies off because the queen can’t give the worker ants directions with her pheromones. She also cannot lay any more eggs so she can’t add to the ant population.
Using innovative products and techniques are crucial to quick and effective carpenter ant control.
Some homeowners who call us about carpenter ants see immediate relief from the activity in their homes, while some homeowners see a brief increase in activity followed by a sharp decrease in activity until they don’t see any more. It just depends on how close the main nest is to the house, how fast the product can get back to the queen, etc.
Each carpenter ant service comes with a 2 month warranty, so if you ever need any follow-up service, there is no additional charge.
Give us a call for your carpenter ant control needs today! If you’re looking for a one-time service for carpenter ants, we’ve got the expert staff with 15 years of experience to rid your home and yard of these pests!
Carpenter ant control is also covered in our Peak Seasons Plan, so you may want to consider if the Peak Seasons Plan is for you. And, if you’ve ever thought of annual pest control, look to Done Right Pest Solutions for that as well. With affordable plans to fit your needs and budget, along with multiple discount opportunities, we like to make sure your pest control budget won’t break the bank!
So if you have routine ants in Minnesota roaming your yard and home, try out our Peak Seasons Plan. Our expert technicians know what they are doing, our 5-star Google reviews prove it.
Conclusion & Next Steps
You learned 5 crazy facts about carpenter ants. Among these are that they are innovative, smart creatures and work very well in teams as a colony.
You also learned that carpenter ants can be helpful in degradation of dead trees in forests, but how they are very destructive to residential and commercial areas.
We also explained how we treat for carpenter ant control, and noted that this service is included in our annual plan: the Peak Seasons Plan.
So if you have seen any carpenter ant signs or actual carpenter ants in or around your home, give Done Right Pest Solutions a call at 651-342-9489. We would love the opportunity to help protect your home from these invaders!
Did you learn anything new about carpenter ants in this post? Have you seen carpenter ants traveling in one path? We’d love to hear from you in the comments.
Want to read more helpful content and about subjects tailored to your needs and interests? Sign up for our free newsletter!