Carpenter Ants....

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Exterminator is coming tomorrow. I really didn’t want that option because of the kids and baby. But I’ve found them in almost every room, and a whole bunch in the laundry room.

Majorly annoyed! :mad:
 
Mary_Gail_36 said:
Exterminator is coming tomorrow. I really didn’t want that option because of the kids and baby. But I’ve found them in almost every room, and a whole bunch in the laundry room.

Majorly annoyed! :mad:
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You are doing the right thing. I had a problem with termites a few years ago. We had to have a major part of a patio room wall reframed. This was worse than just being majorly annoyed. We now have a service that inspects our house regularly and baits the traps regularly. For my money it is worth having an inspection done on a regular basis when you factor in the damage these critters can do. I have been told that carpenter ants are worse than termites. If they are, I don’t want to think about it. Since it is Memorial Day weekend, consider relaxing at some nice vacation destination for a couple of days, especially if you have concerns about your children. The really bad chemicals they used to use are now banned by the EPA and must not harm pets, children, etc. The trap system which sets out bait to poison the colony is effective but takes a while to work. Really check for damage though. We didn’t realize we had a problem until we noticed that some trim paint was cracking. It turned out that the wood behind the paint was totally gone!.
 
PoliSciProf said:
You are doing the right thing. I had a problem with termites a few years ago. We had to have a major part of a patio room wall reframed. This was worse than just being majorly annoyed. We now have a service that inspects our house regularly and baits the traps regularly. For my money it is worth having an inspection done on a regular basis when you factor in the damage these critters can do. I have been told that carpenter ants are worse than termites. If they are, I don’t want to think about it. Since it is Memorial Day weekend, consider relaxing at some nice vacation destination for a couple of days, especially if you have concerns about your children. The really bad chemicals they used to use are now banned by the EPA and must not harm pets, children, etc. The trap system which sets out bait to poison the colony is effective but takes a while to work. Really check for damage though. We didn’t realize we had a problem until we noticed that some trim paint was cracking. It turned out that the wood behind the paint was totally gone!.
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My in-laws once had to rebuild practically their entire screened-in porch because of those pesky carpenter ants. They only saw a few, but when they had the exterminator in and checked out the actual damage, it was far more extensive than they had envisioned. Get to them early, with a professional.
 
Mary_Gail_36 said:
I’m not sure if I should worry …yet…but we have found some carpenter ants in the house! Yesterday morning, 4 in the bathroom, sort of wondering around, not in a line. Then we didn’t see anymore. We thought maybe they had come in through the window.

Today another carpenter ant in the living room wondering around. I don’t want to call the exterminator yet, because we have small kids and a baby.

Carpenter ants aren’t just ugly and big, they eat wood! So I need them out, but I don’t want pesticides.

Any suggestions?
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Hold off on the exterminator… at least for now.

“Terro” makes some very effective bait traps. Check your local hardware store or walmart. Don’t spray them, it won’t work. Spraying only kills the ants you can see leaving 98% of the ants back at the nest unharmed.

The bait traps will have an all day parade of ants going to it, then taking the poison back to the nest where it will share it with the entire nest and all will die during the next few days. I believe the bait traps are not harmful to kids (as long as they don’t eat them) or pets.

Check out the video
youtube.com/watch?v=FP8AsEDkNZI

👍
 
I have had to deal with the carpenter ants, also.

They are pesky and can be very destructive.

But the homeowner can succesively eliminate them.

Professional extermination products work best, and shops that sell these supplies can usually give good advice for use.

Exterior spraying, combined with interior bait stations, works very well.

I save a lot of money, by doing my own extermination, and obtain very satisfactory results.
 
For what it’s worth, I’ve had very good luck lately with a product called “Combat” - it’s a gel that comes in a 1-oz syringe. You just put little blobs of it along trails or wherever you see ants (preferably on a little piece of masking tape, because the stuff is hard to clean up). The ants eat some, tell their friends, they all come swarming and eat their fill, and then take some back to present to the queen, who is quite pleased and about to bestow them with the royal order of anthood… and then they all DIE!

My latest infestation took about 12 hours to clear up with this stuff. I think my ants are Argentine ants - little brown ones - so I don’t know how well it works with carpenter ants.

On that note, I’m just curious how you know they’re carpenter ants.

When I was a kid, I always thought carpenter ants were big. Then one day, I saw a big tree limb come down from a tree, and lots of medium-sized black ants walking in and out of little tunnels in the wood. I figured those must be carpenter ants. And they looked just like the ants in my apartment. (I moved out long ago, and the building has now gone condo).

Anyway, other than very basic descriptors (small, medium large; black, brown, red) it’s pretty hard to tell one ant from another.
 
I fought these for many years with all the stuff you could buy off the shelf. Carpenters and the little browns would come to the bait and engorge. Then there would be fewer but they always came back. Did some research on their habits and found this bait.

fastpestcontrol.com

A few days later I watched the carpenters battling each other and walking around with dead ants heads. The bait makes them hallucinate and kill each other including their queens.

I have been ant free for around 4 or five years now.
 
Mary_Gail_36 said:
I’m not sure if I should worry …yet…but we have found some carpenter ants in the house! Yesterday morning, 4 in the bathroom, sort of wondering around, not in a line. Then we didn’t see anymore. We thought maybe they had come in through the window.

Today another carpenter ant in the living room wondering around. I don’t want to call the exterminator yet, because we have small kids and a baby.

Carpenter ants aren’t just ugly and big, they eat wood! So I need them out, but I don’t want pesticides.

Any suggestions?
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Mary Gail,

Whatever you do, don’t panic! We went through this same situation several years ago when my kids were infants. We were dead set against pesticides and finally needed to go with an exterminator who only applied treatment outside. The treatment worked and we never had another problem.

You need to be careful about some exterminators who try to scare you. Check out this message board unexco.com/msgboard/msgboard.mv John is the most honest exterminator I’ve ever met and provides all kinds of free advice to people all over the country on his message board. He will also recommend honest exterminators around the country. As luck would have it, he is located right around my town and I was able to use his services. If you have any questions I recommend that you post on his board. He can steer you in the right direction.

Good luck… I’ll keep you in my prayers. Problems like this can be stressful.

God Bless,
Gary
 
Hi all. The exterminator came Friday. Luckily, he didn’t find evidence of the nest in the house. He treated outside, and inside he treated the areas where I saw them. The indoor treatment is supposed to be safe enough to use in a hospital room with a patient in it.

Haven’t seen any more.

I knew the were carpenter ants by the size. The had to be almost an inch long. :eek:
 
We read that carpenter ants like wet wood and termites like dry wood. We kept finding the black ants in our house, and eventually found them more consistently in one area, in the kitchen corner behind the refridgerator. We opened up the wall and found thousands of ants eating wet wood. The gutters were messed up, sending water down the inside of the wall. So we fixed the leak, replaced the wet wood, poisoned the ants that were there and sealed up the wall. Problem gone.

At our new house, we get the little brown ants every spring, and just put out bait. That clears them up till the next spring.
 
wcknight said:
The ant bait traps works like a charm. A few find them and bring it back to their colony. Then a stream of ants carry it back destroying the whole colony (it only takes a couple of days). BUT a few weeks later hatchings may come back but they too are destroyed. You may want to replace them every year and keep them where young kids can’t get to them.
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You are exactly right. Exterminators don’t want you to know this either. As I referred to in my previous post on this thread, the Terro ant bait traps wiped out several colonies of ants in and around my house for about twelve bucks. I got mine at Lowe’s

Exterminators might be needed if you have termites, but ants can be handled by the homeowner putting a few bait traps out. People instinctively want to spray when they see ants, but this is the wrong approach. Spraying only kills the ants you see, leaving 98% of the colony annoyed, but unharmed. Bait traps on the other hand kills the colony!
 
For any kind of ants:My grandmother always said, that if you can find their nest. and/or where they are coming in, pour a kettle of boiling water on them.
I grew up watching her boil the ants, & other than an occasional bait trap (outside the doors), that was all she ever did. And she got rid of them better than people who bought the latest “:new” way to kill ants.
 
Okay, so I kept seeing this thread and had been curious about it since we are dealing with some big black ants in our house. Never seen these kind before. Anyway, we started the other day with Terro baits inside. I have some for outside but have not put them up yet. My biggest problem is I’m not sure where they are coming in at. I don’t see the typical ant line anywhere. They just wonder around in the bathroom and kitchen. I have seen a couple in the living room as well. So right now the little bait pieces are just in those two rooms. But wow, oh, wow do they suck it right up.

Lesson learned, never be in a hurry to make a fruit salad for a party and then NOT clean up completely afterward. SHEESH! I left the clean up for this morning and when I went to move the banana peels from the cutting board I had flash backs of the German roaches we had in our condo in Orlando!!! The ants went running; there had to be a good dozen of them. And those suckers will hide behind things like roaches too. YUCK!! So, my kitchen is quite clean and I have fresh bait out.

I definitely need to get the traps out outside. My biggest concern is if they are carpenter ants, what kind of damage have they done to the house. We have a very old house to begin with and in many of the windows the wood is not in the best of shape. sigh Definitely not something I want to deal with right now.
 
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