Carpenter ants in the house are difficult to eradicate once they’re firmly entrenched in your home. They are among the most common ant species in Oregon.
ORGANIC ANT EXTERMINATOR FOR CARPENTER ANTS – NO PEST GUARANTEE
ANT & GARDEN PEST CONTROL in Beaverton, Oregon expertly locates carpenter ants and makes sure they are removed from your home permanently!
We also offer FREE organic home pest control consultation!
WHAT ARE CARPENTER ANTS?
Carpenter ants are easy to identify – they’re black in color and they’re pretty big, typically between half to three-quarters of an inch long, although females can be bigger. Carpenter ants are often referred to as the “termites of the northwest”, but they don’t actually eat wood the way termites do. However, they do burrow through damp, rotting wood, constructing intricate galleries within the hollowed-out wood in order to build their nests. Carpenter ants are very common in Oregon gardens, making their homes in places like dead tree stumps, old wood piles, and even within rotting fences.
When a carpenter ant colony first establishes itself in your garden, it begins by building a primary nesting site outdoors. You might notice lines of these big black ants scurrying back and forth in your garden, but for the first several years after the initial colony establishment, carpenter ants remain outdoors at their primary nesting site. However, when the colony matures after a few years, it will send out worker ants carrying new pupae and mature larvae to create secondary nesting sites, usually in places that are relatively drier than the primary nesting site. Unfortunately, this often means that the carpenter ants that once lived exclusively in your garden are now burrowing their way inside your home.
Carpenter ants build their secondary colonies in warmer, drier areas compared to their primary site, but they still prefer damp, moisture-ridden wood. So if you start to see carpenter ants inside your home, it’s a pretty good sign that you have some moisture damage in the structure of your house. Before you know it, these ants can create massive colonies inside your walls, causing even more damage to the structural integrity of your home. At this point, you’ll probably need organic carpenter ant pest control measures to prevent further destruction.
SIGNS OF CARPENTER ANTS IN THE HOUSE?
As a seasoned organic ant exterminator, I’ve observed that carpenter ants are clean and industrious creatures. When constructing galleries, they remove the debris they generate and deposit this as little piles of powdered sawdust just outside the entrance points to their nesting site. These entrance points will often appear as little holes, barely even noticeable, often beneath window sills and along the edges of your floor just below the baseboards.
Secondary nesting sites are created when the original colony has matured and new offshoot colonies need to be formed. The larvae and pupae carried into the secondary sites develop into winged ants, which then leave the nest to form new colonies. Many homeowners with carpenter ant infestations have reported hearing rustling sounds inside their walls, which is actually the sound of the ants’ beating wings as they get ready to emerge from their nest.
Carpenter ants, like most ant species in Oregon, need water and simple sugars to survive. When they live outdoors, they eat insects and can even turn to the fresh fruit in your garden as a food source. When they live inside your house, they scavenge in your home for similar food sources, so it wouldn’t be unusual to find them making their way onto your kitchen counters or into your pantry. Only organic carpenter ant pest control treatments can prevent a full-blown ant infestation in your home.
HOW TO GET RID OF CARPENTER ANTS
Carpenter ants can pose a serious problem to your home’s structural integrity and unlike sugar ants, their bites are very painful and can cause burning and swelling. Carpenter ants also secrete formic acid into the wound when they bite you – while this does not usually cause serious health problems, it can cause complications in young children and people with insect allergies.
There are a number of ways you can deal with carpenter ants in the house, but it’s always better to choose organic pest control methods over commercial, chemical-based sprays and treatments. Organic carpenter ant control treatments have a lot of significant benefits, including:
Protecting the Safety of your Family and Pets
Most of the major pest control companies use commercial sprays made with harmful chemicals to treat carpenter ant infestations, both inside and outside your home. This leaves your family and pets vulnerable to the harmful effects of industrial strength chemicals that can actually linger in your home for several weeks to several months after treatment. At ANT & GARDEN PEST CONTROL in Beaverton Oregon, I work exclusively with organic carpenter ant pest control treatments to make sure that your ant problem is resolved quickly and efficiently, without compromising the health and safety of your loved ones.
Targeted Organic Treatments
Commercial ant control treatments also have the disadvantage of being too broad in scope. They kill all the insects in your home and garden, which isn’t necessarily a good thing as they can destroy beneficial insects along with pest insects like ants. I focus on using and developing targeted organic pest control treatments which include custom bait traps and organic sprays.
Customized Organic Carpenter Ant Control Plans
ANT & GARDEN PEST CONTROL understands that each home is unique, which is why I provide a customized organic carpenter ant pest control plan for each client I work with. Unlike most large commercial pest control companies, I take the time to identify carpenter ants and their nest sites in and around your home so that I can destroy the colonies at their source. I also treat your home using targeted treatments based on the size and scope of your carpenter ant infestation.
ORGANIC PEST CONTROL TREATMENTS FOR CARPENTER ANTS
If you see even a few carpenter ants in your house, it’s a fair bet that you have an established colony inside your walls. Unfortunately, once you reach this point, you have a settled infestation on your hands and the best way to get rid of it is to get the help of a professional organic ant exterminator. There are a few ways of dealing with an intransigent carpenter ant problem, but the most effective methods include:
Bait Traps
Bait traps are a crucial component of any organic carpenter ant treatment plan. When used properly, bait traps help destroy the colony nest sites as carpenter ants carry the bait material back to their nest, eradicating the colony at its source. However, it’s important that you have the right type of bait for your trap. Most commercial bait traps are ineffective because they don’t provide an attractive enough bait to lure the ants. I make custom bait traps designed to provide carpenter ants with everything they love – fats, proteins and simple carbohydrates as well as water. I also use an organic bacterial agent as the active ingredient in my bait traps, along with nicotine as an organic toxin. My custom bait traps work so well because carpenter ants are irresistibly attracted to my unique bait formula. Unlike commercial bait traps, my traps don’t kill ants on the spot. Instead, the carpenter ants carry my bait back to their nests where they pass it on to all the other ants, effectively destroying the entire colony at its nest site.
Non-repellent Sprays
Available only to licensed, certified professionals, non-repellent sprays are a category of insecticides that are formulated to have a slow-acting effect on carpenter ants and other pest insects. Unlike the traditional repellent sprays that you can find in the store, non-repellent sprays do not kill carpenter ants on contact. Ants track their way through the non-repellent spray and end up carrying it back with them to their nest. When the ants in the nest groom each other, they pick up the spray as well and in no time, the entire nest is dead – thanks to the slow-acting poisons contained in these non-repellent sprays.The biggest advantage of non-repellent sprays is that ants can’t actually sense them, so they happily walk right through the spray, unwittingly poisoning themselves as well as the rest of their colony. Repellent sprays on the other hand smell very strong to ants and unless you spray the ants directly, they’re practically useless – ants will simply walk around any repellent sprays you put down. I like to use non-repellent sprays in combination with my custom bait traps to eradicate your carpenter ant infestation completely, destroying the nests and disrupting the colony at its source.
At ANT & GARDEN ORGANIC PEST CONTROL, I take pride in providing the very best in customized, organic pest control plans to get rid of carpenter ants and keep them from coming back. If you’re dealing with an intractable carpenter ant problem and you’re looking for effective, organic carpenter ant control treatments, give ANT & GARDEN ORGANIC PEST CONTROL in Beaverton Oregon a call and ask for Ryan. I’ll come up with a customized solution to your carpenter ant problem with same day service available and a no pest guarantee!