How to Get Rid of Carpenter Ants

Did you ever wonder if you can prevent carpenter ants from entering your house or home after the implementation of all the necessary plans and actions? Well, to be frank, the answer is a straight NO.

Why is it so? The reason is quite simple. It is because there are still quite a number of factors that are beyond your control. For example, if you leave your windows wide open, there is a possibility that winged carpenter ants fly into your home; or maybe there might be gaps or small opening that you never spotted and carpenter ants comes into your house from that doorways; and many other more…

The point to note is preventive actions can only help to minimize or reduce the risk and possibility of carpenter ants invading your home; you will not be able to totally eliminate that proportion, however slim that percentage it is.

That brings us to this question: how to get rid of carpenter ants?

To get rid of carpenter ants, you can either DIY, do it yourself or seek professional pest control expert for help.

You can go through several tips listed below and explore the various points. If the carpenter ants problem proved to be too nasty for you, then, don’t try to do it yourself as it can get worst and becomes quite messy. Spend a small amount of money and seek professional help would be a better alternative.


Trace the carpenter ants nest or nests.

This is the first thing that you need to do. You need to find out how many nests carpenter ants had built in your home.

To find out where the nests are, you can look out for sawdust trails that carpenter ants leave behind as they tunnel through woods. This sawdust trails will eventually lead to their nests. However, it may not be that easy to locate as well because sometimes, these sawdust trails are not visible as they are hidden deep underneath the wood surface.

Another ways to find out where the carpenter ants built their nest is to listen for crunching or crinkling noises. Using a screwdriver, probe the wood by tapping along baseboards and other wood surfaces and at the same times; listen carefully for the hollow sound of damaged wood. If a carpenter ants nest is nearby the probe area, you can hear a sound similar to the crinkling of cellophane produced by the carpenter ants.

Once you have located the first carpenter ants nest, continue to inspect and investigate the other part of your home and to ensure that there are no more carpenter ants nest in it. It is quite likely that there will be more than one nest and you should check carefully and thoroughly to ensure that you have found all of them.

After finishing all the inspection and you are certain that you have located all the carpenter ants nests, then, you are ready to move on to the next stage, that is, to get rid or kill the carpenter ants.


Get rid of carpenter ants.

The best and straight forward way of getting rid of carpenter ants is to reach and destroy the nests, but, it may not be simple as most of the times, these nests are deep inside the walls and are not accessible easily.

One way to reach them is to drill holes straight into the carpenter nest. For example, for wall voids and other hidden spaces, you can drill a series of small holes about 1/8 inch each and then puff boric acid into the nest areas The boric acid are easily available at most hardware stores and these strong powder will kill the ants once they get into contact.

Besides destroying the nests, take note of the path that carpenter ants travel as well. They may move along wires and pipes, so, spraying insecticide on these areas will help to eliminate them as well.

However, before you started to drill the holes, you will want to make sure that the drilling won’t hurt the building structure else you might be incurring further damage and cost.


Using Baits to Get Rid of Carpenter Ants

If drilling holes is not feasible due to whatever reasons, you have no other choice but, to try using baits to get rid of carpenter ants.

You can create baits using mixing boric acid and sugar (carpenter ants feed on sweet substances) and place it near the areas where carpenter ants are usually seen. Once the carpenter ants feed on the baits and proceed to bring it back to the nests, it will help to kill the other ants.

If you have to use baits, then you need to be extremely patient because using baits will take a much longer time to see results. It is quite likely that you will continue to see carpenter ants in your household for the short term and you will need to refrain yourself from killing them. It is because if you kill the individual carpenter ants, you are indirectly cutting off the mode of transporting of baits back to the nests, and wasted your effort instead.

Getting rid of carpenter ants may be simple or difficult, depending on individual. Don’t try to do it if you think it is tough, seek professional help would be easier now than to clearing up the mess later.

How To Prevent Carpenter Ants

Having carpenter ants at home is clearly a problem that no homeowner would like to have. So, rather than waiting for the problem to occur and then try to fix it later which may be quite messy, you should instead look into the area of preventive actions: how to prevent carpenter ants from invading your home and cause damages to it.

Drawing up a list of preventive actions is useless unless you know what is carpenter ant and what it is all about, including things like its nature, habit and how they damage your home. To put it simple, you understand what are the possible risks, objects or things in your house that will attract the carpenter ants and try to minimize them. So, be prepared that a lot of these preventive works will involve visual inspection of your home, the surrounding and also their maintenance.

As we mentioned above, understanding carpenter ants will help you in the long run and if you have read one of the earlier article, you will know that carpenter ants are more likely to seek out moist and damp wood. Most of the pointers given below and based on that fact, so, check them out and carry out your necessary preventive actions.

• Removed any moist, soft or rotting wood, log stumps and waste wood. Carpenter ants are attracted to moist, soft or rotting wood (do we need to repeat that?). So, one of your top priority is to check out for plumbing leaks, overflowing gutters, leaky chimney flashing, roof edges, attics, door, windows frames and many others that may appear to be a possible nesting area for the carpenter ants.

• Trim trees and bushes that touch your home roofing and siding. By doing so, besides preventing possible damage to the walls and roof, you are also reducing the moisture problem and possibility of carpenter ants nesting in dead branches that may fall into the roof and subsequently invading into your house.

• Try to minimize any possible wood-to-soil contact, for example, landscape timbers, decking or fencing. If it is unavoidable, use the correct type of pressure treated timber to reduce the risk.

• Examine and repair any cracks to the foundations as it will be easily used by carpenter ants or even termites for access.

• Ensure that all openings where pipes and wires enter the house are tightly sealed and if there is any plumbing or outdoor water taps leak, repair them without delay.

• Storing firewood on the ground or stack against the sides of the home is a big NO. Never do that. Stack them up off the ground with a non-organic material beneath them. Also, ensure that you have examine the firewood (check for possible carpenter ants) before bringing them inside your house

• Check that there are no dead, rotting or poor health trees nearby your house. If there is, contact relevant authority to move them as soon as possible as carpenter ants simply loved this kind of environment.

These are a few simple things that you can do to prevent possible invading of carpenter ants and there are definitely many more. The key points is to up keep the maintenance of your property and surrounding to reduce any possible risk

Prevention of carpenter ants is not a one off type of work, it is always on going. Regular inspection and check and maintaining a clean and well ventilated environment will be very helpful in the long run of fighting and preventing carpenter ants.

Types of Carpenter Ants

There are many different types of carpenter ants in the world and if you dig into and look further which include the different characteristics and species, there are easily more than a thousand different species of carpenter ants around.

In the United States alone, there are as many as 50 different species of carpenter ants and if you are not aware, not all of these carpenter ants species will infest building structure. The most likely species that will infest and cause potential damage to your house is the black carpenter ant. While you may find these carpenter ants on the ground, don’t be surprise that they can be easily spotted in high rise premises as well.

Below are some of the different types of carpenter ants.

Black Carpenter Ant


As the name implies, this species are all black in color and they are the most common types of carpenter ants in the United States. They mostly nests in wood and can be easily spotted in most regions and landscapes

Florida Carpenter Ant

These are carpenter ants mostly seen in Florida due to it warm temperature, though it can be spotted in other states as well. You need to be very careful when handling these Florida carpenter ants as they can bite and cause harmful injuries to your body. Your skin will itch and has a burning feeling as they will release some painful acid when they bite. The Florida carpenter ants will nest in already damaged wood and existing structural voids as they are the species that do little excavation or structural damage to sound wood.

Red Carpenter Ant

It has a reddish-orange head and thorax and a black abdomen. It is smaller than the black carpenter ant. Prevalent in spring and summer

Hawaiian Capenter Ant

This species has a black-orange head and orange thorax and a black abdomen. It is smaller than red carpenter ants and most commonly found in southeastern Asia, midway and Hawaiian Islands.

New York Carpenter Ant

Found throughout the northern United States but is more common east of the Dakotas. It is also found in many western states extending south into New Mexico.

Pennsylvania Carpenter Ant

Primarily black in color. They can inflict a mild bite.


And possible many others.


The color of carpenter ants varies, depending on its species. There are various variations, some are black, some are red and you might come across yellow brown as well. Their size may vary as well, so, unless you are specially trained in this area, it might be hard for you to identify the species right on the spot.

Though we try to list out most of the common carpenter ants that we come across and aware of, it is highly possible that we could have leave out many others as well. If you are aware of any other types of carpenter ants that we have missed mentioning, do feel free to leave your comment right below and we will be more than happy to update our list of types of carpenter ants.

What is Carpenter Ants?

Carpenter ants are large black ants that will make their nests in walls, behind siding, in attic, insulation or trees. Although their size varies, typically they range from 1/4 to 1 inch. Carpenter ants prefer to build their nests in dead, damp wood and as oppose to what most people thinks, they don't eat wood. They simply tunnel through the wood leaving a residue of sawdust or excavate wood to build their homes in the cavities left behind

Carpenter ants are different from termites. They can nest anywhere and if they found their way into your house, be prepared for some serious structural damage they made to it. Carpenter ant swarms usually occur in the spring and if they do, then it is almost a sure sign that a colony is nesting somewhere inside the structure.

As stated above, carpenter ants don’t eat wood, but they are capable of damaging it by hollowing it for the purpose of nesting. Usually, they will nest in moist wood and that include rotting trees, boards and logs buried or lying on the ground, tree stumps and roots. Inside houses or building, they can nest in decayed wood, bathroom tiles, tubs, sink, attic beams, insulation, showers and dishwashers or hollow spaces such as wall voids, curtain rods and doors.

Carpenter ants will excavate galleries in wood and once they did it, you will find shredded fragments of wood ejected from these galleries though either cracks that preexist in the wood or slits made by the ants. If you inspect carefully, you will find that it contains no mud-like material which is similar to what termites did. These are typically dead ants and bits of insects which the carpenter ants have eaten and when you found more and more of these, it is quite clear that a carpenter nest is nearby the area. However, most of the times, you will not be able to discover as there will no external signs of damage as the excavated sawdust will be well kept hidden behind a wall or in some other concealed area.

As you already know by now, carpenter ants may nest in quite a number of different locations in the house or building and these locations can be either inside or outside the structure. Typically, there are two different types of nests carpenter ants will construct; they are the parent colonies and the satellite colonies. The differences between these two different nests are the parent colonies will contain an egg-laying queen, brood and 2000 or more worker ants when mature whereas a satellite colonies will only contains a larger number of worker ants and there will be no queen, eggs or young larvae.

The workers ants of the satellite colonies will move readily between their nest and the parent colony and as such, carpenter ants inside a home may have originated from the parent colony or from one or more satellite nests. As a simple illustration, it is possible that the carpenter ants may come from the parent nest which is located in a tree stump, woodpile or landscape timber outdoors, and as the same time, it is also possible that it comes from one or more satellite nests hidden behind a wall in the bathroom or kitchen.

When accessing the extent and potential damage made by the carpenter ants to a home, it is important to determine the total number of nests that are present within it. It is also important to take a look at the infestation and the possible duration. Checking out the nests created by carpenter ants might be a huge task as it is quite possible that there are no external and visual damages made. One of the ways to locate the hidden nests is to probe the wood using a screwdriver. Tap along baseboards and other wood surfaces with the blunt end of a screwdriver and at the same times; listen carefully for the hollow sound of damaged wood. Quite often, if a nest is nearby the probe area, you can hear a sound similar to the crinkling of cellophane; that sound is produced by the carpenter ants.

The damage made to the wood structures will vary and the blunt fact is that as long as a colony is present in a structure, a certain level of damage is already done.

So, what can you do about it? What is the next immediate task that you need to do to handle it?

This is something that we will discuss about in the near future post. How to get rid of the carpenter ants.