Everything You Need To Know About Carpenter Ants In Durham

What Do Carpenter Ants Look Like?

What do the carpenter ants in your house even look like? These critters can have coloring ranging from black, dark brown, red, or even red and black. Since their coloring and size can sometimes vary, these aren’t always the most reliable ways to identify carpenter ants.

Instead, you can often recognize these pests by their rounded thorax and heart-shaped head. Some members of the colony, like the queen carpenter ant or reproductive males, can have wings, which tend to be light brown or tan.

While it’s most common to spot adult carpenter ants, you may sometimes see their eggs or larvae, especially if you’ve got an infestation in your home. Eggs are cream-colored and oval-shaped, while the larvae of carpenter ants don’t have any legs yet. Once they reach the pupal stage, they’ll begin to transform into adult ants, which are much easier to identify.

How To Tell If Carpenter Ants Are In Your Home

What are the signs of carpenter ants versus another type of ant infestation? Here’s what may indicate a carpenter ant problem in your Durham home: 

• You begin to notice winged ants peeking around hidden crevices, walls, ceilings, or even venturing out into your home.
• You find shed wings from reproductive carpenter ants left behind after mating season, usually near window sills, vents, or baseboards. These shed wings are small and typically light brown or tan in color.
• You notice rustling noises, which may sound like they’re coming from inside your walls or the hollows of doors and windows.
• There are piles of sawdust-like wood shavings left around baseboards, window sills, doors, or other areas of higher carpenter ant activity.

While these are the most common signs of carpenter ants, you may also notice structural damage around your property as well, but that is generally only noticeable in severe cases.

How Much Damage Can Carpenter Ants Do To Your Home?

Carpenter ants like to create tunnels and galleries in decaying or rotting wood, which can cause the wood to become hollow over time. This is where carpenter ants like to nest, although they don’t feed on this wood like termites.

A small carpenter ant infestation may not cause a lot of damage, but if the problem is left untreated for too long, these insects can cause a lot of costly structural damage. And, as the infestation grows, the parent colony will branch out into new satellite colonies, which can give the carpenter ants a new spot to cause damage around your property.

Unfortunately, like many other types of ants, carpenter ants aren’t always easy to get rid of, especially if there’s a large infestation. At first glance, the damage caused by carpenter ants or the signs of an infestation can often be confused with termites. Not only can they cause similar types of damage, but like termites, a carpenter ant problem can go unnoticed for long periods of time – often until these ants have already caused costly damage to your home.