If you own a home in the Boston area, chances are that you’ve seen carpenter ants. In case you’re not sure what they look like, carpenter ants are those big, plump, deep black ants—the really big ones They’re called “carpenter ants” because they work with wood—except they don’t do it like a human carpenter. Instead, carpenter ants devour wood, and the wood they love to devour is all too often what makes up the frames of our homes. Tom Norton, the owner of Combat Pest, a pest control company in MA’s South Shore, says that carpenter ants can cause a wide array of problems if they are not treated right away.
Carpenter ants are big insects, but “they’re hard to find if you don’t know where to look,” says Norton. To figure out where a carpenter ant infestation is originating, Norton and his pest control team usually look in moist places.
“Carpenter ants are very dependent on moisture, like many other insects,” says Norton. “We tend to find them near a leaky pipe or near a water source.” These are places where carpenter ants breed and thrive, and because these moist places could be in your basement, Norton strongly believes that you have to act quickly. You don’t want to give carpenter ants the luxury of attacking your house’s framework from the inside.
“Carpenter ants do a lot of damage to window sills and window frames,” says Norton. “And they can destroy sections of the house.” While this damage probably would not be as significant as termite damage, it is still quite serious, says Norton. “It’s really a question of finding them, to prevent them from doing what they want to do most—gnaw at your house.”
For Norton’s South Shore termite control professionals, detecting carpenter ants isn’t incredibly hard because they know where to look. And, of course, the large size and obvious dark color of the ants is a giveaway.
To treat carpenter ant infestations, Norton’s crew uses an ant bait. “It’s a very granular product, and it works slowly to kill off a carpenter ant colony,” Norton explains. “The idea is that the workers bring the poison bait back to the nest, where it starts to wipe out the whole population. Aerosols and liquid sprays can be effective too, depending on the severity of the infestation.”
Norton needs to be more aggressive with his team’s treatment if the ant problem is more aggressive. In a way, it’s a case of the punishment meeting the crime—the crime being perpetrated by those pesky carpenter ants, of course.