Finding carpenter ants on your property is something that every homeowner in the Greater Boston Area should be concerned about. Carpenter Ants are able to eat through most woods to build their nests and cause significant damage to a home. Fill in the form below to schedule a time for a carpenter ant inspection and free estimate.
Carpenter ant nests come in two forms: parent nests and satellite nests. The parent nest is where the queen resides. When resources in the parent nest become limited, satellite nests are settled and the colony expands. Nests can be indoors or out, so finding them is the key to exterminating carpenter ants. Carpenter ants follow scented trails to travel back and forth between food and their nests. You can use this trailing behavior to your advantage to help identify a Carpenter Ant problem. Since they are most active late at night, you can place a few drops of honey or jelly on the backside of masking tape left outside each night. When the ants feed on the honey, don’t spray or kill them. Instead, follow them back to their nest to find where the ants are coming from. This takes some patience.
Indoors, carpenter ant nests are usually located in areas where there is moisture-damaged wood. Prime nesting locations include wall voids, behind dishwashers, near sinks and tubs or other areas with high levels of moisture. The ants often access their nests via baseboards, electrical outlets, door casings or cracks in the walls. If the ants aren’t living in your home and their nest is outside, you will often find colonies in tree stumps, dead or dying trees, and other wood with a lot of moisture damage.
To prevent Black Carpenter Ants from infesting your home so that you don’t have to call us in the future, we have some tips. Make sure to remove all stumps, logs, and waste wood within 100 yards of your home. Do not allow vegetation, especially evergreen shrubs and trees to be in contact with the house. Store firewood away from the house and bring it into the house only when needed. Keep wooden parts of the house dry by making necessary repairs to roofs, flashing, gutters, and downspouts. Replace any water-damaged, decaying wood. Carpenter ants will not infest wood that has moisture content of less than 15 percent. Keep exterior wood surfaces painted and sealed. Seal holes through which pipes and wires enter the house. Place a moisture barrier over soil in crawl spaces and under wooden porches, and provide adequate ventilation for such spaces.
