Write-up by Owen Jones

Carpenter ants are large ants that live in most parts of the globe. They like to construct their nests or colonies from dead, damp timber. Even so, contrary to popular opinion, they do not eat wood as termites do.

They use wood to construct their colonies and tunnel by means of it in their search for new sources of food. This is evidenced by piles of frass, which is the debris that the carpenter ants have chewed out of normally damp. dead wood.

There are over a thousand sorts of these big, usually black ants, which belong to the genus Camponotus. Carpenter ants live in colonies and have colonies each indoors and outdoors in moist, decaying or hollow wood. They like to travel via this rotting timber by cutting out galleries or walkways in timber length-methods up the grain in order to create passageways from one part of the colony to another.

The parts of a residence that are most most likely to be of concern to carpenter ants are floor joists, window frames and rafters in the roof. In reality, anywhere where you are most likely to have a difficulty with water ingress. Decks and porches are also naturally at risk.

An interesting fact about carpenter ants is that some kinds generate inhabitants that can explode in order to eradicate invaders. These so-called exploding ants are found mostly in South East Asia where there are at least nine species that can trigger their bodies to explode, thereby committing suicide.

These ants have a huge abdomen which provides a kind of glue which is shot out of the head onto invaders. The exploding ant dies, but all the invaders caught up in this mesh of glue are immobilized as properly.

How do you know regardless of whether you have carpenter ants or not? Well, the finest way of indetifying carpenter ants from other ants is by observing their waists. A carpenter ant has only 1 node or hump and their thorax or upper body is properly-rounded and smooth. Other similar ants have a lot more than one node or an uneven or two-sectioned back.

If you are searching at flying ants, then the difference among carpenter ants and termites, with which they are frequently confused, is that carpenter ants have darker-coloured bodies, narrow waists, elbowed or bent antennae and, if they have them, the hind wings are shorter than the front wings.

Another factor is that carpenter ants are quite happy to come out and be noticed, whereas termites are light-shy, even though carpenter ants are most active among dusk and mid-night and reproductive termites will take to the air for the duration of the day time.

Carpenter ants eat protein and sugar such as other insects, living or dead and spilled honey or sugar. This honey can also be extracted from aphids or greenfly, which is referred to as honeydew. For that reason, if you want to trace carpenter worker ants back to their nest or nests, you have to lay down something like honey and watch the ants take the food back to their nests. This is the 1st step in destroying colonies of carpenter ants.

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