As summer begins to get into full swing, your home may be susceptible to issues with Carpenter ants. In this post, we’ll cover the top 3 warning signs your home has Carpenter ants.
Warning Sign Your Home Has Carpenter Ants
One warning sign that your home has carpenter ants is soft and crumbling wood around your home. Carpenter Ants don’t eat wood, but they tunnel through it. These excavated tunnels provide traveling and nesting benefits.
This can lead to Carpenter ants tunneling through walls, decks, and even wood based furniture. Beyond weakened, crumbly wood, you might also find tiny saw dust mounds.
Carpenter ants do eat foods similar to other ants. They focus on protein like meats or dog food, sugar, and even other insects. Like with many other insect based pests, you’ll want to remove food, shelter, and water sources.
Getting rid of shelter points is probably going to be tough unless you want to dismantle your home or discard furniture. Despite this, there are some simpler steps you can take to prevent issues.
You can keep wooden furniture indoors as well as treat outdoor products with finish or paint. This isn’t a complete solution, but you’ll find that Carpenter ants are less likely to try and burrow through treated wood than untreated. The finish also will help keep the wood from absorbing moisture which makes it more conducive to Carpenter Ant invasion.
Also, be sure to keep food and water sources out of their grasp within your home. That means fixing leaky faucets as well as keeping food containers sealed. You can also avoid leaving full pet food bowls out for extended periods of time. Only place food in them when you are actually feeding your pets.
Dead trees and fallen tree branches around your home is another warning sign your home has Carpenter ants
Another warning sign that your home has Carpenter ants is called dead fall. Since Carpenter ants burrow into wood, they tend to do a lot of damage to trees. Trees that have dropped branches or fallen over are going to soften over time with rains and other moisture collection. This softened wood is exactly what carpenter ant colonies seek.
This deadfall can also be a result of carpenter ants whose burrowing can cause trees to lose branches, die, or fall over, or just sag in odd directions. If you are seeing a lot of dead branches on the ground around your home or fallen trees you could have a Carpenter ant problem on your hands.
They might not be in your home at this point, but if they are in close proximity to your home, it is most likely only a matter of time before they try and get in.
As seasons change, temperatures change, or any sort of drastic environmental change, it can cause pests to leave their homes in search for other sources of food and shelter. Oftentimes, this means venturing into your home.
The 3rd warning sign your home has Carpenter ants is a bit more obvious but not a guarantee
Now the other warning sign your home has Carpenter ants is that you actually are seeing Carpenter ants in or around your home. This one is a bit more obvious, but it still isn’t always a guarantee you have a Carpenter ant infestation.
Carpenter ants send out scouts in search of food, shelter, and water like other pests, so if you are seeing them around, it might just be a scout they are sending out. If you do happen to see these scouts, be sure to take care of them as soon as you can, so they can’t alert the other ants from the colony.
Ants will leave trails of pheromones to lead the rest of their colony right to your home, so make sure you eliminate them before that can happen.
In addition to seeing Carpenter ants, another warning sign that goes along with this is hearing them. Often you might not see the Carpenter ants, but you might hear them burrowing through the wood structures in or around your home.
These ants cause noise while they are tunneling through the wood structures they are in. Often these structures could be hidden behind walls or under your deck, or in other hard to reach places.
This means you might not necessarily see the Carpenter ants, but you could hear them instead. Certainly if you are hearing or seeing Carpenter ants in or around your home, you should take immediate action to have your home treated, before they can cause any major damage. Most people do not hear them, but sounds of this nature are worth checking out as they may be a carpenter ant or other wood related pest such as old house borers.
You can check out our video here on how to properly identify Carpenter ant swarmers to know what you are looking for.
If you suspect that you have Carpenter ants and would like to set up a treatment you can reach out to us here at Rove Pest Control to help you keep your home safe!
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