Carpenter Ants!

[Tom108]

I can hear them in the studs crunching away, but can not find where they enter the house or the studs? Any suggestions or tips for elimination? Thanks. Tom.

[Myxylplyk]

If you can really gear them, their galley must be extensive. Ants are very tough to eraticate. It will be a long subscription type treatment. Get professional help.

Good luck, Myx

[Ernie Jurick]

Oh, lord, that brings back unpleasant and expensive memories of replacing sills and studs. You'll need a professional exterminator. Also someone to tell you what damage has been done and how to correct it, if necessary. There are resin-injection remedies that will prevent your place from caving in like a house of cards. Good luck and mucho sympathy.

-- Ernie

[Chris Johnson]

Are you sure it's not termites instead?

Carpenter ants don't usually attach healthy wood but termites do. Carpenter ants prefer wood that's already damaged by water and other mechanisms.

You need a professional exterminator either way.

CJ

[Doug Miller]

If it's clearly audible, my first suspicion would be mice.

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)

Save the baby humans - stop partial-birth abortion NOW

[Blue]

Is the noise on an outside wall? Wood siding? You sure the sound is not coming from carpenter bees...the ones that look like a bumblebee and make an absolutely perfect 1/2 inch hole? They are VERY audible. They were at work on the soffit on my porch and I could hear them from 10 feet away. Wish I could train them to drill half inch dowel holes where I wanted them drilled!

[Todd Stock]

If you are in a union area, refuse to pay them contract rates for the work and they will depart.

But seriously - exterm> I can hear them in the studs crunching away, but can not find where they

[spearfox]

Links to carpenter ants as well as other pests from home page. Informative.

[mauiboy]

Hi Tom,

I've had somewhat of a similar problem and it just bothers me that these ants are inside the studs of my house. Any way, I've read that the sprays and stuff don't work because you're just dealing with the ones you can see, when it is the queen you want to kill. This is what I've found that works.

I mix a 1:1 ratio of Boraxo (yes, the laundry detergent) and sugar. Mix thoroughly in a can or whatever. I usually keep a good dry supply premixed in case I need it. Spoon out a couple of teaspoons into another container, cup, baby food jar. Then, mix with just enough water to get it to a honey-like, syrup consistency. Now, put this stuff along the "ant trail" that they've made in your home. They'll find it, tell their buddies, and with a few hours they'll be 20-30 ants at the source. They'll take it back to the nest and hopefully end up feeding the queen. They eat it because it is sweet, but an ingredient in the Boraxo does something to their digestive system which kills them. Some people find they have to mess with the ratio because it either doesn't kill the ants so they have to make it stronger or it kills them too quickly so they have to make it weaker. They idea, of course, is for them to get it back to the nest.

REMEMBER: this stuff is poison, so animals and little children might tend to eat it because it is sweet. So, keep these in mind when placing it. Good luck.

[Chris Merrill]

I second that...they are VERY loud. I can hear them from 20' away on my house :(

************************************ Chris Merrill [e-mail] (remove the ZZZ to contact me) ************************************

[Eddie Munster]

Mine would have been carpenter bees. You really can hear them. Crunch, crunch crunch. Ejecting little piles of sawdust as they work. They don't know what to do with it also.

John

Doug Miller wrote:

[Dave W]

[mrhct]

[Mike Reed]

I just whooped a carpenter ant infestation in my shed. I could hear them too.

As others have said, find the nest before you take any action. If you spray trails, you'll just make it tougher to find the nest. Don't seal their access point if you find it, you'll just trap them.

For mine, I had to remove the wallboards, peel back fiberglass insulation, find the nest, then spray (Ortho carpenter and killer from the Borg). I got about 2000 of them. Maybe 150 winged big females, that flew around. Crazy. I felt like I was in a bug horror movie.

If your walls aren't insulated, then when you find the nest, you can spray through small holes in the drywall/plaster/whatever. Once you have a good idea where the nest is, spray between all studs six feet on either side of the nest. I would drill three holes between each pair of studs, high, mid, and low (to get around fire breaks/bracing). I just used one of the hand-pumped garden sprayers (note that the spray says for outdoor use only -- use your own judgement here).

That should get them.

If you're really worried about your situation and structure, I'd say to just go into demolition mode and pull off your wall surface to get a look at everything. You'll know for sure where the nest is, you'll know for sure that you got them, and you'll know what kind of damage you're looking at. Drywall work isn't that tough, and is probably cheaper than an exterminator if you want to hire it out.

Next you need to seal off the access point. Mine was a vine travelling up into my shop's eaves. They used it as a bridge. The nest was very close to this entry point, at about 18" (I would guess this is common). Anyway, I did some deforrestation in that area. I still need to caulk the cracks, but that's part of a big shop overhaul to come this fall.

Good luck, and act fast -- they'll drive you crazy if you have to think about them chowing in there for long.

-Mike

[WP]

The thing with carpenter ants is that it takes about two years before the nest become mature. You can tell a nest is mature and ready to make satelite nests is when you see flying carpenter ants. Carpenter ants can move their nest in under 2 hours once disturbed and the large ants you see only make up 6% of the nest. Those are the foragers. It's the small ones that do the damage. Also, you have to keep this up for at least 10 months as there is nothing that will kill the eggs and larvae. It takes about 10 months for and egg to develope into an ant where our poisons will work on them. The other advantage to not giving them so much poison that it kills them right away is that carpenter ants are carnivores. So they eat their dead and thus you also posion the one that was at the feeding trough. They like a source that is close to food, water and is dark, so find a place in your house (if the nest is actually in the house) that meats that criteria and start there.

[McQualude]

spaketh...

try over at alt.consumer.pest-control

[Traves W. Coppock]

On 10 Jul 2003 15:46:40 -0700, [e-mail] (Mike Reed)Crawled out of the shop and said. . .:

interesting,,,i have read alot of great information here,,,but no one has said or asked one thing.,

do termites and or carpenter ants eat flooring like OSB? or are they strictly solid wood eaters?

Serious q here,,,i got saggy OSB subfloors that i am planning to just glue and screw another layer of flooring grade plywood over, but if these things eat floors...i might be in trouble!!!

Traves

[Ernie Jurick]

No, they don't. Carpenter ants need the naturally-occuring structure of the wood to orient themselves as they build galleries and avoid daylight.

they ate the wood as termites do, OSB would probably kill them off, but ants are strictly borers.

-- Ernie

[JEL]

Carpenter ants usually live in rotten trees, some times the main nest is hundreds of yards away, they also set up "outposts" as then veture outward from the main nest. They can enter via any trees touching the house or on the ground. They mostly travel at night, making it more difficult to find them. The professionals usually take a shotgun approach, they poisen everything, everywhere, hoping to kill them. Keep in mind carpenter ants are attracted to wet wood, look for any water damaged wood and replace it. Clear everything from within 4 feet of your house and spray the area with dursban or some other ant killer, spray up the outside walls as well - if you have a 4 foot barrier, it may stop them from getting into the house. You may have to shoot insecticide into the walls as well. The key thing is to look for water damaged wood and get a barrier set up outside the house. There are mixtures you can make, using borax ( not the soap boraxo) and sugar to kill them if you have pets to worry about. Good luck, you have a hard fight ahead of you.