Identifying and Managing Carpenter Ant Infestations

Podcast Transcript:

Introduction and Initial Reactions

Travis McGowin: How would you feel if you discovered that there was an insect essentially chewing on your house, other than termites?

Michael Wienecke: I would be devastated and upset.

Travis McGowin: Devastated and upset, those are your big emotions.

Michael Wienecke: Distraught.

Travis McGowin: Oh, distraught. Is there a difference between being distraught and devastated and upset?

Michael Wienecke: Unnerved.

Travis McGowin: We’re just going to pull out every descriptive word we can think of now.

Michael Wienecke: No, but seriously, I mean, one of the biggest investments that I have, yes, I would be very upset and I would call Pesky’s Pest Control and be like, “Hey, get rid of this problem for me, whatever it is, whatever’s munching on my home.”

Travis McGowin: You’re not biased at all to the company, are you?

Michael Wienecke: No, not at all. Just saying, call a reputable company and let them come and evaluate.

Identifying Carpenter Ants

Travis McGowin: Well, so what I’m getting at here is a very specific insect, and the one I am currently referring to is the carpenter ant.

Michael Wienecke: Yes, we have been seeing a ton of carpenter ants. I have a lot in my driveway right now, just crawling all around.

Travis McGowin: You know, the interesting thing is that carpenter ants can go unnoticed for so long due to a couple of reasons. Obviously, they are gnawing on wood, and most of the time wood is going to be in a not-so-visible place inside your house—inside the walls, inside the attic, the framing, the studs, that sort of thing. So, they can go undetected for so long until the damage is so significant and the population is so large. But what are some signs that you might actually be dealing with carpenter ants?

Signs of Infestation

Michael Wienecke: Well, I was going to say, unless it’s a brick home, but you kept going, so…

Travis McGowin: I stole your thunder, I’m sorry.

Michael Wienecke: You stole my thunder. What are some signs? Well, the first sign would be carpenter ants, that would be the first sign. The second sign would be things getting kicked out of the baseboards or even little holes, sawdust, dead little insects, decapitated bodies, legs, antennae.

Travis McGowin: Sounds like very violent little creatures.

Michael Wienecke: Hey, they are clean little creatures, I will say that. They keep it smooth and they don’t want anything messing up their home.

Travis McGowin: You know, the very interesting thing too, and I’m going to touch on what you said a second ago about obviously seeing carpenter ants, however, there’s one little fact that a lot of people don’t know or don’t realize as to why they might actually not physically see the carpenter ant itself. Can you guess why?

Michael Wienecke: Is it because they are nocturnal?

Travis McGowin: Absolutely.

Michael Wienecke: Well, excuse me, hold on, they’re not nocturnal, that’s not the right thing to say. They feed in the nighttime, which is at night.

Travis McGowin: Nocturnal is a very good…

Michael Wienecke: Well, that’s not fair because I’ve got them in the daytime… I don’t know what’s the word.

Travis McGowin: I mean, yeah, you’ll see an occasional carpenter ant out foraging around and doing things in the daytime, but the vast majority of them are going to be running around at night. That’s where a lot of times if you have looked and you’ve got some sort of damage obviously from an insect that destroys wood and you feel like it’s not a termite, then the time to really go out and scout is actually after dark.

Michael Wienecke: I disagree with you 100% and I disagree with the book 100%. I think the best time to go out is early morning and late afternoon. I don’t think you need to go out that late. I’m just saying, that’s the one thing where I’m like, “The book’s got it wrong.”

Travis McGowin: Questioning everything, Travis.

Case Study: Prattville Home

Travis McGowin: Well, I will say that I have seen it both ways, actually. So, I had a customer over in the Prattville area that was obviously having some sort of carpenter ant issue they knew about, in between their first and second floor behind the sheetrock. It was kind of interesting, the bulk of the area where the issue was was tied to the ceiling above the master bathroom that was located on the first floor. And so, they actually would have bits of sawdust and, like you said, the insect parts, dead insect parts, fall from the vent fan that was located above the toilet and land on the toilet seat. So, they would like clean their toilet and then a little while later there would be like sawdust and everything else falling from the ceiling and getting on the toilet seat.

Michael Wienecke: So, how, just curious, did they clean up all that after…? Did you do a treatment? How did that go?

Travis McGowin: Yeah, absolutely. So, I inspected the house first and foremost to ensure that it was in fact carpenter ants that we were dealing with. And I did find a select few very large black ants that were scattered throughout little areas of the house on the first and second floor, kind of localized to that corner of the house where that bathroom was. So, I did, of course, believe we were dealing with carpenter ants.

Travis McGowin: And then it became detective work. So, a lot of times you can have a carpenter ant nest inside of a house—it’s not out of the realm of possibility—but I wasn’t finding that type or amount of activity that led me to believe that they were taking up residence in a wall or in the ceiling or something like that. So, I started looking around the outside of the house, got to that outside brick veneer area that was kind of adjacent to that master bathroom, and started kind of stopping and looking around on the ground during the daytime. So, this proves a little bit of your theory that the books are wrong.

Michael Wienecke: I’m telling you, it’s only one thing.

Travis McGowin: I’m ignoring you. Anyway, so I did find one or two carpenter ants running around on the ground, and then at that point, I started investigating the trees that were immediately to that side of the house. And I actually took a really cool video of it, but I found a tree that towards the bottom of the trunk of the tree had a giant hole in it. And I believe I just kind of like messed with the tree, kind of like kicked at it a little bit, caused some vibration, that sort of thing. And out of nowhere comes just this massive amount of carpenter ants coming out of this hole and I was like, “Oh, well, looks like I found the nest.” So, of course, obviously treated the nest, treated the house, customer has had zero problems with carpenter ants since that day.

Nesting Habits and Moisture

Michael Wienecke: Well, that is great because that’s what we want to do, right? We want 100% satisfaction. So, let’s talk about—I love how you said the nest and luckily it wasn’t in their house, but they can also do satellite nests. So, you can have a nest in your house and then a nest outside in the tree. So, in large infestations, which typically take what, three to five years to get fully invested… Another thing too is they don’t just nest in trees, they’ll nest in the ground. In that particular home, was there any—why were they going to the bathroom? Was there any moisture issues there, any rot?

Travis McGowin: Not that I saw. So, let me rephrase a little bit about the structure or the design of the house. So, the house actually did have a basement area underneath it. I did not personally see any moisture issues going on. Doesn’t mean that they weren’t there, just during my inspection I didn’t see any obvious signs of, like you said, rotted or damaged wood, any idea that there could be a leak in the roof or something like that. I mean, they again, could have been there, but I didn’t see any obvious signs or anything like that during the inspection.

Risks and Damage

Michael Wienecke: Gotcha. Well, let’s talk about them other than, you know, a pest that destroys your home. You know, other than that, they really don’t… They have the ability to bite, but they don’t—they’re typically not very aggressive in all the ants that we deal with. But they do have the ability to bite. So, biggest thing is just, I wouldn’t get into a nest. I wouldn’t mess with like a bunch of them at one time, you might have a problem, but one or two is completely fine.

Travis McGowin: I think more so than the potential threat, like you said, of them retaliating against you, I really think that the frustration from these ants certainly comes more from their economic impact from just structural damage or physical damage of a house or of a property. You know, I would even think that in like, for example, in the case of that house that we were just discussing, if you had carpenter ants that were say, nesting in a tree, destroying a tree, well, I mean over time, you know, I would think that there’s the potential that that tree could be structurally compromised if it’s close to your structure, a storm comes through, is it going to weaken the trunk of that tree, is it more susceptible to fall on your house? I mean, I think that there’s some more ongoing, extensive issues with them other than just them damaging your house directly.

Michael Wienecke: 100%. Well, I mean, it goes into kind of what we talked about too, just the house maintenance. I feel like we talk about that with every issue. It’s like just, you know, clean your house up, you know, fix your house, just, you know, get all the rotten wood, which I’ve got some that I gotta take care of this year too. So…

Termites vs. Carpenter Ants

Travis McGowin: Well, wood-destroying insects can—speaking of damaging trees—we had some termites eating in the roots of a tree in my front yard at one point. Got rid of the termites, obviously the tree was still dead. We left the house one morning, left the house, came back that evening, and there was a tree, that specific tree was laying in my front yard. It fell over. There was no storm, there was no rough winds or anything like that. The tree was just like, “I’m done,” and it just fell over in the front yard. Thankfully missing our house and obviously just leaving a mess in the front yard that we had to saw up and get rid of. But yeah, that structural damage for whatever length of time from the termites obviously weakened that tree and, you know, that could have been very serious, happening in the middle of the night and landed on our house or something like that from a life-safety standpoint, but it also could have been serious structural damage for our home.

Michael Wienecke: Or your car, or you, or you know, something like that. So they definitely can cause damage. I think the biggest thing, though, is don’t be alarmed when you see them in your house. How many major infestations have you seen from carpenter ants?

Travis McGowin: Not many. You know, obviously not near as much carpenter ant activity in a house as say, an Argentine ant or something like that. I’ve definitely not seen where carpenter ants have been quite as big of an issue as some other breeds that we deal with.

Michael Wienecke: Well, they don’t want your home. I mean, they want something that’s just nasty, rotten, something that they can really, you know, thrive off of.

Foraging and Aphids

Travis McGowin: Well, and they also, you know, from a food standpoint, they most of the time will actually eat honeydew, which is produced by an insect called an aphid. And a lot of times it’s kind of like this mutual relationship between the carpenter ants and the aphids, where the carpenter ants will cause the aphids to, you know, excrete honeydew, which is like a sugary liquid that they’ll feed the colony with. And the ants recognize the aphids as a food source, so they’ll actually kind of protect the aphids from predators or whatever other predators prey on aphids. And then they’ll even carry, you know, some food items that the aphids like to them to ensure that the aphids still, you know, stay alive and are able to produce honeydew. So it’s kind of interesting how they’ll have this mutual relationship to survive and thrive. And typically, you’re not going to have an aphid infestation in your home; it’s going to be up in a tree or wherever they’re residing. So, yeah, the infestations in a home are a lot less, from what I’ve seen, not quite as common.

Michael Wienecke: More aphid, more problem.

Travis McGowin: Is that the saying?

Michael Wienecke: I mean, typically with ants, yes. The more aphids you have, the more problems you will have.