On the other hand, suspecting a massive presence of these creatures in your home is not good news, because they can harm your structures. It is therefore imperative that one knows how to get rid of carpenter ants, this article is a complete guide.
Identify carpenter ants with the naked eye
The problem posed by carpenter ants
In addition to the annoyance and discomfort that these ants cause you by being in your home, they can indeed damage your wooden structures.
Like termites, carpenter ants dig galleries in the wood, but without eating it (unlike termites). They need to build their nests in wood, and are especially attracted to damp or rotting wood.
The accumulation of the main nest and the satellite nests in wood makes it fragile. It therefore has a greater risk of collapsing in the long run.
When should you worry about carpenter ants?
It may happen that you find one or a few ants in your home sporadically, you should not worry in this case, because it is very likely that they were just passing through.
On the contrary, the presence of carpenter ants should be suspected if:
Be sure of the presence of ants at home
Here is an effective method to ensure that it is not a simple passage but an invasion that forces you to get rid of carpenter ants: at night, turn off all the lights to let the ants carry out their activity naturally, then take a torch and visit the ground; you will find dozens or even hundreds of ants following the same path, it is the one that leads to the nest which is probably behind a wall.
How to get rid of carpenter ants?
We come to the main point of this article: the ants are there, damage has already been done and we must not delay to act. You will be right to try to get rid of carpenter ants on your own through the following techniques:
1. Find the main nest and destroy it
How to find it? follow the path of the ants in the dark.
Once the nest is spotted, eliminate it quickly before the ants move out.
a. Destroy an outdoor nest:
To do this, simply flood it with soapy water several times, sprinkle with red pepper or wood ash. These methods can be effective but short-term.
b. Destroy an indoor nest:
In this case, the best solution is both radical and environmentally friendly: you have to remove the wooden piece where the queen’s nest is located and throw her out of the way. the House. If you can’t remove the latter, you can always dig holes in it to inject insecticides. The most commonly used against ants is borax.
2. Poison the ants
- Put lavender essential oils on the path of the ants, so you target all the ants that make this path without killing the queen. So it’s not the best solution.
- Prepare a bait made from a mixture of water, sugar and boric acid or Borax which is a poison. The ants will consume this mixture and bring it to the ants that remain in the main nest and the satellite nests. In a few weeks, all the ants will be poisoned. However, it doesn’t always work as planned, ants can escape from this fish.
NB: in fact, the insecticides that you can buy in stores intended for the public are not very effective against ants and threaten the health of your children. However, those used by extermination pros are truly the panacea.
Get rid of carpenter ants by an exterminator!
You know now that you cannot eliminate a colony of carpenter ants in your house, unless you have a lot of time and a lot of motivation. So how do you get rid of carpenter ants effectively? Failing that, we encourage you to call a carpenter ant exterminator, certified and experienced, who will solve your problem professionally, in a short time and with guaranteed results.