Spring Starts on March 20th

The official 1st Day of Spring is March 20th. Spring begins at Suburban Exterminating when customers begin to call for carpenter ants. Carpenter ants cause a great amount of home damage on Long Island.

How Carpenter Ants Look

The most common carpenter ant on Long Island is the Pennsylvania carpenter ant. They are medium to large size ants that range from jet black in color to black and red. Rarely, they can be all red. 

 

Carpenter ants develop in stages from egg, larvae, pupa and adult.

 

Where Carpenter Ants Live and Work
Carpenter ants are social and live in a colony with labor divisions. This caste system has workers, a king and a queen. The workers gather food supplies, make nests, and care for the young eggs and larvae. Large workers act as soldiers for the colony. Some workers develop wings which help these workers form new colonies. When carpenter ants fly to form new colonies, the swarm usually occurs in the spring on Long Island.

 

Carpenter ants get their name from their habit of hollowing wood to build a nest. They like moist environments especially where water leaks have occurred in our homes. Leaks around kitchen and bathroom plumbing, as well as roof leaks, are places that carpenter ants like to make their home. Ant colonies are also found in firewood, tree stumps, fencing, hollow doors, and decks.

 

Carpenter ants create satellite colonies in addition to the main colony. The parent colony may have 6 satellite colonies within 300 feet.

 

When carpenter ants create a colony in wood, they chew off tiny bits of wood. This wood is deposited outside the nest.

 

Carpenter ants eat many things including dead insects and honeydew produced by aphids. The worker ants can travel from one homeowner’s yard to another.

 

How a Homeowner can help Suburban Exterminating eliminate their carpenter ants
Be prepared to answer a few key questions about the ants at your home:

•  Have you ever had a problem with carpenter ants before? Where was the problem? 
• Have you ever had a problem with leaks from the roof or a pipe? 
• Where do you see most of the ants? 

• How often do you see the ants? Every day? Several ants per week?