CARPENTER ANTS

I was visiting my parents in the Wisconsin tundra during the end of April to find my mom going crazy as she was finding periodic carpenter ants in here immaculately clean home. She wanted me to provide her with an explanation as to why she has these ants in her house. Of course if there were crumbs all over the place the answer would have been obvious but as everything was so clean I had no idea. I travel back to my home here in the mountains and what do I find? Carpenter Ants! In my crumb free home. In speaking with our cleaning manager I have discovered that they are a common problem this spring.

Carpenter Ants are the large black ants, not the little tiny ones. They do not feed on wood as the name may suggest but they do chew on wood to create tunnels for nesting.

What did Wisconsin and Georgia have in common? A lot of moisture. Carpenter ants thrive in moist dead wood. Carpenter ants are nocturnal so you do not always see them. Most carpenter ant nests are found in the backyard in a decaying wood although they can form a colony in your house. To help control these ants from getting in your home, make sure you have no decaying wood next to the house (Guess I need to move the wood pile!) or no decaying wood on your house. I got rid of my problem using an ant bait that they take back to the nest. That process took about 5 days.

SO, if you have a carpenter ant problem rest assured you have Mom and I as company!