The carpenter ant is an interesting insect.  It is large and often mistaken for a termite but it doesn’t eat wood. It can do a great deal of damage to a home, even without actually consuming wood. Their nests can hold up to 3,000 ants and have literally thousands of satellite nests.  Carpenter ants also have the rather upsetting habit of swarming in the spring, which is when many homeowners call a West Palm Beach ant control company such as Gulfstream Environmental Services.

The swarming behavior is often a homeowner’s first clue that he has a carpenter ant problem. Typically, these pests go unnoticed, burrowing away inside the wooden structure of a home. It’s in the spring that they take wing, looking for new nesting sites. Many people mistake these ants for another insect and starting calling for termite control treatments.

Carpenter ants don’t eat the wood in your home, but they will damage or even destroy it.  They are very aggressive and effective destroyers, too. They carve tunnels through the interior of the wood, leaving channels that the ants use as highways for travelling from one place to another.  The exterior of the wood, like a structural support post or a wall stud, looks solid at first glance. But any pressure will reveal the compromised interior as the weak and crumbling wood that the carpenter ants have left behind.

Prevention

• Preventative measures are one of the best ways to keep these ants under control.  One method is utilizing proper lawn care services.  West Palm Beach residents can cut back on carpenter ants by keeping their lawns healthy and pest-free.  Here are a few more ways to keep them from tunneling into your home’s wooden structures:
• Cut back on moisture.  This is what attracts carpenter ants the most.  Damp wood will bring them running.  Keep decks and foundations dry.
• Replace water damaged wood.  Check regularly anywhere that wood meets earth, like the support posts on a desk or pool surround.
• Store lumber and firewood in a dry place off the ground and away from the house and its foundations.
• Don’t leave stumps in the ground.  Have them professionally ground down or removed. Keep foundation plantings cut back from the home’s walls and don’t let them become overgrown.

Eradication
Spraying won’t do much for a carpenter ant infestation.  Only the visible workers will be killed, leaving the nest to produce more. Professional South Florida ant control help is needed to locate the primary nest, which is likely somewhere outdoors.  (It may not even be on your property.)  Destroying the nest and its satellites is the only way to keep the problem from recurring.  Once the nest is destroyed, your Gulfstream Environmental Services representative will set about getting rid of any remaining ants inside the home.

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