Carpenter ants are often mistaken for termites.
You can easily tell them apart by looking at them closely. Carpenter ants are all black.
Carpenter ants have bent antennae (termites have straight antennae) and they have different-sized wings (termites wings are all the same size).
Finally, carpenter ants have very narrow waists. Carpenter ants can cause serious damage to the woodwork of your house and getting rid of them is not always the easiest thing to do.
Carpenter ants make their colonies indoors or outdoors.
Outdoor colonies house thousands of ants and there is always a home nest (where the queen ant lives) and satellite colonies with smaller pockets of worker ants.You can get rid of carpenter ants with boric acid.
Don’t be alarmed by the sound of this chemical. It is safe to use and is available online and at most hardware stores and garden centers.
If the ants reside in your walls you will need to drill a few holes and spray or puff the boric acid into the holes. You should make several holes to make sure you get the colony and the trails
to/from the nest.
Remember, there may be several colonies so continue to track and monitor the trails made by the carpenter ants and repeat this process if you find additional colonies.
The carpenter ants will take 7-14 days to die.
You need to find carpenter ant colonies before you can get rid of them.
Set bait such as honey and wait until they come to feast, then follow the carpenter ants after they visit the honey. Yes, follow them! Carpenter ants form well traveled paths back to their colonies.
Carpenter ants are nocturnal so the best time to do this is at night. You can pinpoint the ants if they are inside your walls by tapping the wall.
The colony area will have a hollow sound. You can also hear the sound of a lively ant colony. A soft rustling noise can be heard from a lively colony of ants at night.
