There are many ways to find out you have carpenter ants in your Springfield home. You may see a single ant walking around on a counter or a floor. You may see an ant scaling a cereal box in your cabinet. You might see a big black (or reddish black) ant on the food in your pet's dish or, worse, a line of them going from your pet's dish to somewhere under your kitchen cabinets. Your first run-in with carpenter ants may be when large ant swarmers start to appear on the inside of your windows. The last way you want to find out that you have carpenter ants is when you start to notice that the porch doors don't slide right or a window won't open. So, when should you be worried about carpenter ants?
If you see a single reddish or black ant, with a single node between its abdomen and thorax, anywhere inside your home, it is time to be worried about carpenter ants. The singular reason you should worry is because carpenter ants don't always feed inside a house they are infesting. They may choose your walls to damage, but feed on something outside your home. If you're seeing a single carpenter ant every now and again, that is a warning sign you should definitely heed.
Carpenter ants send out scout ants to find food. They won't crawl around your home in large numbers. You're likely to only see a single ant here or there.
It is only when carpenter ants find a food source that they will mobilize into large numbers. Then, it is hard to miss them. They will walk, lock and file, to the food source until they have had their fill. But, since so few carpenter ant scouts roam around your house looking for food, you might leave a food source out for weeks, or even months, before these ants find it. This can give the impression that you don't have that many carpenter ants inside your home. But, don't trust the equity of your home to this perception. The only way to know the extent of your infestation is to have a pest specialist do a detailed inspection.
Don't wait until you see the damage. Don't wait until you have carpenter ant swarmers crawling around on the inside of your windows. When you see these large wood-chewing ants, contact a pest management company and have them do an inspection.
Your home is one of the largest investments you'll make in life. Protect your home from carpenter ants and other wood-destroying organisms with the professionals at American Pest Solutions.