Adverse weather can surely damage your home, but pests can do much more damage than that. One of the nastiest pests that most of us have to deal with is the carpenter ants. Although they may not be more destructive or invasive as compared to many other pests, however, what makes them nasty pests is just the way they can damage your home.
Carpenter ants in the house, what you can say in French as fourmis dans la maison don’t just chew on the wood’s outside that you can easily see and stop them but they can chew on the woods inside.
Following are the few warning sign about the presence of such carpenter ants at home.
- You will be able to spot large black or red ants in the house.
- Beneath the wooden areas such as baseboards, window sills, and door jambs you will find wood shavings piles of sawdust lying.
- You will see long trails of ants or ant paths on your lawn. These carpenter ants will usually travel long distances for their food and then bring it back again to the nest.
- If you can hear inside your woodwork or in your walls faint rustling noise then you can suspect carpenter ants are burrowing into your woodwork for creating their nests, and also they make noise while scraping out all the wood particles.
- If you find few large winged ants appearing from your walls, ceilings, floor joists, and a few other hidden crevices and cracks.
- If you discover dropped/shed wings of any “swarmer” ants close to window sills, vents, or baseboards.
Difference between a termite infestation and carpenter ant infestation
Termites will eat your entire wood but carpenter ants will not gain any nutritional value out of wood but they will simply damage it for making their nests. You can distinguish between the infestations of termites from the carpenter ants by closely examining your damaged woods.
To properly distinguish between an infestation of termite and carpenter ant, it is very important to closely examine your hollowed-out wood. Usually, carpenter ants will clean and polish the wood galleries so that it will appear smooth inside
In case of galleries of any subterranean termites, there will be large amounts of mud and soil. Carpenter ant galleries may also have holes from where all the worker ants will eject unwanted debris, but the wood surface may look undamaged.
