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Termite & Pest Control - Lawn & Landscape Designs
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wood destroying insects
diet
Carpenter ants are omnivorous. They eat a great variety of both animal and plant foods, including honeydew from aphids, scale insects and other plant-sucking insects, plant juices, fresh fruits, living or dead insects, other small invertebrates, common sweets such as syrup, honey, jelly, sugar and fruit, and most kinds of meat, grease and fat. Unlike termites, they cannot digest wood cellulose.
They forage mostly at night. Solitary ants seen during the day are usually scouts looking for suitable food sources.
Nesting Sites
Carpenter ants normally build their nests in hollow trees, logs, posts, landscaping timbers and wood used in homes and other structures. Unlike termites, they do not feed on wood but merely use it as a place in which to build a nest. They prefer moist or partially decayed wood, frequently entering existing cavities or void areas through cracks and crevices.
The ants usually cut galleries with the grain of the wood, following the softer parts. They leave the harder wood as walls separating the tunnels. They cut openings in these walls to interconnect the galleries. Access to the outside may be through natural openings, or the ants may cut openings where none exist naturally.
Occupied galleries are kept immaculate. Shredded wood fragments from the excavations are carried from the nest and deposited outside. Cone-shaped piles of these fragments sometimes build up beneath the “windows” or other nest openings. The piles may also contain inedible parts of insects from their diet, bits of sand or soil, dead ant bodies from the colony, and gener-al debris. This “sawdust” or “frass” is not always visible, because ants may dispose of it in hollow parts of trees, void areas in structures, or unused galleries in the nest.
