Carpenter ants are a serious threat to your home and even your health. They can cause allergic reactions with their formic acid bites. These ants, though, rarely start their colony in your home. They prefer to begin their infestation plans in wood on your property, this gives them a foothold on the territory. The ants will build a nest and a mass of tunnels to store food and when they reach maturity they will produce ants with wings.
These flying ants are capable of breeding and the females, once inseminated, will be queens. The males die off after the orgy and the females chew off their wings. They then find a safe crack or void in a wall to hide and lay her eggs and wait for her workers to hatch. Wow, like some kinda super villain. The eggs hatch into workers and the workers start building the queen her colony and nest. This process continues with each nest maturation. Fling ants will be produced frequently and spread the infestation throughout your house so pervasively that you may never get them out.
So what is there to do? I’ll tell you what there is to do. Take preventative steps. Measures to keep ants away and at bay. You can do this by doing regular inspections of your home for signs of carpenter ants. This can include tiny oblong holes in walls and furniture that tend to have tiny piles of frass beneath them. Frass is a combination of ant feces, wood chips that seem more like dust and bits of dead ants. It is disgusting, sticky and when it dries it can make asthma worse and cause allergic reactions in some people. They can also do that with their formic acid bites.
You can also try looking for signs of dead winged ants, that is a very good sign you have a serious infestation on your hands. If you want you can try to deal with it on your own. Throw some acid right back at them with boric acid spray, it dries and crystallize into a mass of jagged spikes and shred ant carapaces as they try to walk on it. You can also use diatomaceous earth which has the same effect but can be puffed into cracks and crevices and even directly into the ant holes to kill them as they try to leave. You need to keep on top of them, continue treating with everything you have until you stop seeing them completely. Keeping your home clean and food stored in hard plastic, glass or metal will help keep the ants from eating your food. This can then be replaced with boric acid ant bait which will be taken back to the nest and eaten by the whole colony. This in combination with clove oil, lemon and other natural products with boric acid bait and diatomaceous earth you will be rid of your Carpenter ant infestation in no time at all.
Once they are gone you can start work on sealing up your home. The ants got in somehow, and you need to find out how and seal them all up. Entrance ways can be anything, they can be holes in your foundation, an open vent or drain, they can nest inside siding and even enter through tiny cracks in walls and between windows frames. Seal up all of these areas with silicone gel, something the ants cannot chew through. Make sure to seal your foundation with concrete. Do this and they will never come back.
