A Brighton Man’s 52 Year Long Carpenter Ant Infestation Serves As A Good Example Of What Not To Do When Encountering These Pests Within A Home
Carpenter ants are among the most destructive insect pests to finished wood, including structural lumber within homes, cosmetic wood on houses, wooden fences and other finished wood items. In the natural environment, carpenter ants establish nests within tree hollows, wood piles, tree stumps, rotting logs, dead trees and tree branches. Carpenter ants do not consume wood like termites, but they do excavate tunnels within wood, which can completely hollow out valued wood sources if infestations last for a long period of time without being addressed.
Carpenter ant infestations do not always see valued wood sources become infested, as many infestations see carpenter ant workers emerge in homes in order to feed on human food sources. Carpenter ant workers are conspicuous due to being the largest bodied ant species in the US, and when they are spotted foraging indoors, a pest control professional should be contacted to prevent the pests from infesting indoor wood sources, if they haven’t already.
Carpenter ant infestations are very hard to control, as these ants often establish multiple satellite nests within a structure in addition to one parent nest that is usually located within a natural source of wood near an infested home. Eradicating infestations means detecting the location of all of satellite nests and the parent nest before destroying them with insecticide treatments. If infestations are not addressed, carpenter ants will continue to establish satellite nests in hidden areas throughout structures.
Many homeowners assume that ants are merely searching for food and are nothing more than a nuisance within homes, but when large black ants are found foraging in kitchens, the ant pests should be recognized as carpenter ants, and a pest control professional should be contacted for their eradication. Unfortunately, a Brighton homeowner who lacked knowledge on ant pests spent decades trying to eradicate a carpenter ant infestation from his home without success.
Every May for 52 years, the Brighton homeowner found sawdust around his home that had been excavated by carpenter ants. In response to this finding, the man began to spray RAID on foraging worker ants, but of course, this method did not bear fruit. After learning about carpenter ant pest behavior, the man resorted to baits, but this too was ineffective.
For 52 years, the Brighton homeowner stubbornly refused pest control assistance, but he probably would not have had he realized that he needed specialized equipment to detect hidden nests within his home. The homeowner was also unable to access the insecticides needed to destroy nests, as he did not possess a proper license to handle such chemicals. Pest control professionals often inject insecticidal dust through tiny drilled holes in order to destroy carpenter ant nests hidden behind wall voids, in between floorboards, and other indoor obscured areas.
Have you ever struggled to eradicate an indoor insect pest infestation with store-bought bug sprays?