The Carpenter Ant Swarm is Coming… Be Ready with Reliable Pest Control in Oklahoma City!

Ants don’t sleep, but you deserve to get a peaceful rest every night. Carpenter Ants are already stirring and becoming more active, and their numbers will continue to grow until they peak in September and October.  Don’t wait until your house is infested – begin fighting back now!

The best and most convenient way of getting rid of these nasty ants before they lay millions of eggs is to hire the BEST pest control in Oklahoma City.

The great philosopher Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, “Know your enemy as you know yourself, and in a thousand battles you will never be bested.”  It is important to learn about the enemy who is crawling around your walls and under your house.

The Carpenter Ant

Whoever named this species of ant was spot-on.  The name is derived from their incredible nest-building abilities. Carpenter ants are notoriously known for excavating smooth tunnels inside the wood to create their breeding nests.

The size western black carpenter ant colony that is common in your area is typically around 10,000 – 20,000 worker ants when matured.  Some of the largest colonies can grow to up to 50,000 ants!  These colonies are certainly not something you want to let get out of control.

Call the BEST pest control company in OKC – Champion Pest and Lawn!

Carpenter Ants have several identifying characteristics, namely:

1. They have six legs
2. They are typically black, red, or a mix of these two colors
3. They have an oval or segmented shape
4. They are generally shaped about 5/8ths of an inch, but can be ½ an inch
5. They have antennae

Looking for Infestation Signs

Any company offering pest control would tell you that there are only two external signs which indicate a carpenter ant infestation.  The first is to look for small openings on wooden surfaces, and the second is to spot the presence of swarmer and worker ants.

The holes in wooden surfaces are used by the ants to discard debris (wood shavings and fragments of insulation) as they burrow deeper into the structure of your house.  Spotting small portions of debris near these holes is an indicator that there is an active infestation.  As for spotting the ants, worker ants can typically be found foraging for food, while swarmer ants are winged and a sign that the colony of carpenter ants has matured and is ready to breed new colonies.

Carpenter ants favor wood that has been softened by fungus and moisture.

There is a third, less-well known sign of a carpenter ant infestation, but this one is much more difficult to spot (or hear) than the other two.  If you hear gentle rustling sounds coming from inside your walls, that is likely a colony of carpenter ants hustling and bustling about, laying more eggs and expanding their colony.

Carpenter ants are quite smart and very adept at getting into your house.  They will utilize tree branches, utility wires, water pipes, and an array of other methods to penetrate the decaying wood in your home and make it their own.

Finding the Nests

Once the carpenter ants are in your home, getting rid of them is going to be a strenuous task.  The most important things in removing the infestation is patience and working smart.

Naturally, the first step in removing an infestation of carpenter ants once one is identified is locating their nests.  The two types of carpenter ant nests are the Parent Nest, where the queen lives, and satellite nests which are created as the colony expands.  It is possible for the nests to be either inside or outside of your home.

Carpenter ants are most active at night.  Instead of staying awake to try to catch them and locate their nests, you can put a couple drops of honey onto the back of some masking tape, and in the morning there should be a steady stream of ants leading away from the honey back towards their nest.  They utilize scented trails to travel between nests and food source, so it should not be difficult to spot the line of ants returning towards their nest.

Possible Nest Locations

If you think the nest could be indoors, look at the following places where carpenter ants have typically built their nests:

• Behind the dishwasher
• Void in the walls
• Near tubs and sinks
• Places that are usually moist

As mentioned earlier, carpenter ants particularly love wood that has been damaged by moisture.  If their nest is outside your home, it will likely be built around dying trees or ones that have already died, or other moisture-damaged wood like the garage or garden shed.

Once you’ve identified the nests, waste no time in calling the BEST pest control in OKC!

Avoiding a Carpenter Ant Infestation

We’ve all no doubt heard the saying “prevention is better than a cure”.  No matter how skilled our team is at removing all the ants and preventing future outbreaks, it is still more of a headache to have and get rid of carpenter ants than to have never had them at all.  Let’s take a look at some steps you can do now:

1. The first step is to fix any and all leaks in your home. No matter how tiny or insignificant you may consider the leak to be, if there is any chance the leak will rot your wood, you need to get it fixed.
2. Try to get rid of places where the wood inside your home touches the soil. Wood could absorb moisture from the soil creating an opening for carpenter ants.
3. Make sure to check your roof and drainage systems.
4. Clip off all tree branches that touch the roof or overhangs of your home, as they can be used as a pathway to enter your home for the carpenter ants.
5. Any cracks in your foundation should be sealed off. This also includes the spaces where utility pipes and wirings go into the structure of your home.
6. If you have a woodshed, you might want to raise it so it’s off the ground if possible. Otherwise, maintain vigilance all summer and fall as carpenter ants love wreaking havoc on woodsheds.

Why Choose Us?

Despite the best preventative steps, too often carpenter ants outsmart us and find ways into our homes anyways.  While there are steps you can take to battle an outbreak of carpenter ants in your home without calling in the professionals, this is not recommended.

Often you will need to employ dangerous and potentially hazardous chemicals into tight nooks and crannies of your home.  Additionally, without a trained eye you may not get all the ants and any ants left alive will lead to another outbreak a couple days or weeks down the line.  By attempting to do it on your own, you are potentially exposing yourself not only to dangerous chemicals but a second outbreak and being right back where you started.

Champion Pest and Lawn was founded with the goal of becoming Oklahoma’s #1 pest management solution provider.  Due to this, we’ve always prioritized customer satisfaction and gotten very creative with our pest management solutions.

We understand that when a customer comes to us, they are often in dire need of rapid results – and that’s exactly what we deliver.  We are always on the lookout for the next cutting-edge technology that will make it possible to provide the best services of pest control in the whole of Oklahoma City.

Pests can infest your home, your office, but don’t let them infest your life!  Call us today and get these pests out – for good!

With Champion Pest and Lawn, you can rest assured that your family or your business is in good hands.

Get in touch with us today!