The first and most important part of getting rid of carpenter ants is to do a thorough inspection of your property outside. Carpenter ants usually feed on wood. Wood can be anything from a wood porch that has rotted, a door, an old tree stump or a wooden fence.
If you have problems locating the nest you may benefit by setting out a small sugar dish as a bait trap and following them back to their nest. This may require a lot of patience and you staying up late into the night. Listening to the air is also a helpful locating tool. Large carpenter ant nests contain a lot of movement so you may be able to hear crunching from the wood where they are located.
Locating the area where the ants are coming from is crucial to getting rid of them. Once you find the nesting area open it up to expose the inner nest. Next, get a large bucket of boiling water mixed with ant killer and completely drench the nesting area. This is going to get rid of the majority of the ants that live on your property.
Another option is to spray aerosol pesticides into the entrance of the nest and place a bait trap at the entrance. A recommended bait trap consists of a mixture of 1 cup of warm water, 1/2 cup of sugar and three tablespoons of boric acid. This sweet mixture can be left in a shallow dish for the ants or soaked up inside of a cotton ball. Boric acid is a mild acid that is used to treat a variety of infestation problems ranging from ants and termites to cockroaches.
If you notice more than twenty little carpenter ants inside of your home, then the problem may be rooted inside instead of outside. As with outside treatment, it is important to locate the nesting area. Inside a home, carpenter ants will come out through cracks in a wall where they have nested. Carpenter ants will eat away at the wood inside of the walls and can lead to serious problems in the future. It is not recommended to pour extreme amounts of water into the nest as it is good for outside. If the infestation is inside of the home, it is recommended that you take a drill and pass a small hole through the wall to the area where you see ants coming out of. With a small spray straw can, spray ant killer or insecticide into the wall.
A preventative measure you can take to keep the ants from coming back is to then pour boric acid into the hole and into the walls. That way the powder is there to treat them and not laying out all over your flooring.
After treating any carpenter any infestation it is important to fix the problem. If the ants were infesting a rotted area on your porch, you should fix the rotted area by replacing I with a new, fresh piece of wood to eliminate the possibility of the carpenter ants coming back.
It is also highly recommended to switch out any gravel beds you have around the home to containing a white gravel bed instead. White gravel has extreme benefits with drying out an area. This acts as a great barrier to carpenter ants and other pests that prefer a warm, moist environment to live.
Always remember to do a swift check during the spring time to see if there are carpenter ants that are trying to nest on your property.
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