It’s important to be able to tell a regular ant infestation apart from a carpenter ant infestation, because while regular infestations are a nuisance at best, carpenter ants can cause a lot of damage to the home. Here are some of the signs that you need to keep an eye out for.
Carpenter ants vs normal ants
One of the main visual differences between a regular ant and a carpenter ant is the size. Regular ants are fairly tiny, while a carpenter ant worker can reach half of an inch in length, which is noticeably larger. They also have a amroe pronounced mandible, since they need strong jaws to chew through wood. Apart from that, they are very similar in appearance to a normal ant.
In terms of behavior, carpenter ants stand out due to their propensity to build their colonies inside wood. Most ant species that infest the home will build colonies underground, but the carpenter ant will burrow into wood, and this is known to cause a lot of damage over time.
When it comes to prevention, the aim of prevention efforts against carpenter ants is to stop them from infesting the wood of the home. When trying to prevent normal ant infestations, the goal is to simply keep them out of the kitchen or the home. For this, pesticides and repellents available at a hardware or general store are good enough.
Control differences
In terms of control, carpenter ants can be a big headache. Usually, you will need professional help to remove a carpenter ant infestation, due to the way these ants build their colonies. They will often have one main nest, with satellites in the surrounding area. To completely remove the infestation, the queen, located in the main nest, must be killed.
Normal ants will rarely build colonies inside of the home, and when they do, they do not cause any damage. There are some ant species however that you would need to have removed professionally as well. Fire ants, pavement ants, and odorous house ants are a few of these ant species that can either cause damage to the home, harm the residents, or lower the living standards in the home.
If you would like to know more about the various ant species that can infest the home and the issues that they cause, or if you have an infestation that needs to be removed, contact us today.
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