What to Do About Those Miserable Carpenter Ants

According to Hahn, Cannon, and Ascerno in their article titled “Carpenter Ants”, the carpenter ants themselves can be either red or black, they can be large, and they can have wings. This provides you with a definite description of the ants. With this information, you may be able to spot the ants right away in some places within your home.

Now, you may be asking yourself why they’re in your home, and what the little creatures love to eat. Well, Hahn, Cannon, and Ascerno insist that these ants crave moisture. If you have wood in your home that is less than fully dry, the pests may want to make your home their home. Hahn, Cannon, and Ascerno tell how the ants have a strong preference for munching on sweet treats and various proteins (beef, pork, etc.) If you have any of this stuff out in the open (not packaged up or sealed), you may want to throw it out. Why give the pesky carpenter ants food to munch on if you don’t have to? After all, the whole objective is to make the carpenter ants not want to keep residing in your living space.

Hahn, Cannon, and Ascerno point out that carpenter ants don’t really digest the wood that they tear up, they just love to tear it up. Apparently, they’d rather not consume the destruction that they make throughout your home. Of course, this does not help your home any. Even though the ants might not want to literally consume the remnants of their destruction, they’re still going to continue their destructive ways.

You may be wondering at this particular point how you’re going to eliminate these creatures in your home. Hahn, Cannon, and Ascerno basically sum up that you need to trail the ants to their home ground so that you can adequately locate their nest and do some destruction of your own – yes, completely obliterate their nest! Hahn, Cannon, and Ascerno also mention that the ants may have a bountiful number of nests.

There also comes a problem when you cannot accurately locate the nest(s) of the ants. In this case, Hahn, Cannon, and Ascerno recommend that you call someone who is a professional when it comes to removal and destruction of these annoying pests.

Once your ant problem is completely taken care of, what can you do to prevent the carpenter ants from returning to your abode? Hahn, Cannon, and Ascerno recommend that you make sure you keep the wood in your home dry and that you don’t have a lot of moisture in your house. Hopefully if you take this article to heart, you can eliminate your carpenter ant problem (as well as successfully prevent the ants from coming back.)

Hahn, Jeffrey, Colleen Cannon, and Mark Ascerno. “Carpenter Ants.” University of Minnesota Extension. Web. 08 Sept. 2010. http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/housingandclothing/dk1015.html