If you spend any amount of time outside, there is a good chance that you have had the pleasure of seeing a flying ant or two in the warmth of an early summer day. Perhaps you have seen an entire swarm of them buzzing their way across the lawn. These flying ants are not another species of ant at all; but rather, they are winged carpenter ants looking for a new home.
The carpenter ant is easily recognized as the largest of ant species. They can grow 6 to 12 mm long with the queen growing even larger. Carpenter ants nest as a lot of insects do. For most of them, their lives revolve around two things: their queen and the work they do. These worker ants go out in search of food to bring back to the nest where the queen and the soldier ants remain. The queen continues her duties of laying eggs and the soldiers will protect the nest from invaders. After a few years, the nest will become far too crowded and the queen will begin to produce winged ants called swarmers.
The swarmers will leave the nest in what may seem like a cloud of flying ants. They will search for a new tree, log, or building for some soft, moist wood to establish a new nest. When they find their new location, the ants will begin to mate, and their wings will drop off. The workers will go out in search of food, a new queen will lay eggs, and new soldiers will protect her. Once established, a colony of carpenter ants will live up to their name quite well and do a lot of damage to the wood inside the structure of a home. The worker ants will create galleries and tunnels throughout the area where they chose to nest to make sure there is plenty of room for the colony to grow.
Swarms become a problem when they are found too close to a building, or worse, the flying ants are found inside of a building. If a swarm is observed in or near your home, make sure that you give Parkway Pest Services a call. There is a good chance that the original nest is nearby, and it could be only a matter of time before these carpenter ants find their way from an outdoor nest to an indoor one. Don’t give them the chance. A call to us today can save expensive repair work to be done later on.