Carpenter Ants
...Are often considered beneficial because they prey on other insects and enhance the decay of stumps and other wood debris. Unfortunately, however, given favorable conditions, they also attack wood in service and the interiors of living trees.
Carpenter ants attack wherever excessive moisture accumulates in parts of dwellings, other buildings, power poles, and fence posts. Especially vulnerable are porches, roofing and areas near kitchens and bathrooms where water from poles and building foundation timbers in contact with the ground absorb large amounts of moisture from the soil and are thus susceptible to ant colonization.
The ants enter wood through cracks or normal cleavages, such as between siding and sheathing or between flooring and subflooring. In trees they usually enter wood through trunk wounds or the stubs of broken branches and extend their galleries from the decayed portion into the sound wood. The insect attack adds to the harmful effects of wood-rotting fungi, both in reducing the physical strength of the tree and in lowering the quality of the wood.
Symptoms: the presence of otherwise unexplained coarse sawdust beside a house timber, pole, or tree usually indicates that carpenter ants are at work. They chew the wood into small fragments, which they discard outside the tunnel, thus forming a "nest" to use as a shelter in which to breed and from which to forage. Their food is varied: they gather sweet secretions from other insects (aphids, etc.) And plants; prey on other living insects; scavenge dead insects; and gather household foods, such as fats, sugar and other sweets. Their need to travel outside their wood tunnels in search of food (foraging trails) often reveals the location and extent of the colony.
Damage: the tunnels or galleries are principally gnawed by the workers and gradually enlarged to accommodate a growing ant colony. These...
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