The Signs and Symptoms of a Carpenter Ant Infestation

Although carpenter ants don’t cause nearly as much damage as termites, they are anything but welcome house guests. Carpenter ants establish colonies inside soft, moist wood. Rather than eating the wood, carpenter ants cause damage by excavating it to create hollowed-out galleries where their numbers can thrive. So while carpenter ants probably won’t eat you out of house and home, they can move a lot of it out of their way. To protect your home from ant damage, contact a pest control companyat the first sign of an ant infestation. These signs include:

Wood Piles
As carpenter ants begin to excavate the wood around your home, they will need places to discard the shavings. If you notice small piles of shavings around your floorboards, this could be an indication of either a termite or carpenter ant infestation. Either way, contact a pest control expert as soon as possible.

Winged Ants
Winged ants only appear once a colony is fully matured. This means that if you see winged ants inside your home, the carpenter ants may have already made themselves at home inside your walls. Although it’s possible that one or two winged ants could have flown in from the outside, seeing multiple winged ants in your home is not a coincidence.

Ant Trails
As the ant population grows, the workers will leave the nest and begin looking for other sources of food and shelter. Ants typically migrate in a line, with one ant following another following another and so on. If you see a trail of ants in your home, follow the trail back to the source. If it leads into your home, contact an exterminator right away.

If ants are inside your home, Gopher Patrol of Riverside, CA can defeat them with our monthly pest control program. Because of the sheer number of ants that may be present in your home, we recommend on-going pest control, at least until the problem is dealt with. To schedule an appointment with one of our pest control experts, call us today at (855) 460-0564.