Carpenter Ant Pest Profile

Common Name:
Carpenter Ant

Scientific Name:
Camponotus species

Order and Family:
Formicidae, Ants

Pest Control Service Recommendation:
Carpenter And Exterminator

Description:
Carpenter Ants are in the family Formicidae. Members of this family, less than 1/16-1″ (1-15 mm) long, are mostly black, brown, or reddish.

Food:
Most species are predators or scavengers, but a few harvest seeds, visit clusters of aphids to eat their sweet secretions, raise fungus for food in small underground gardens, or eat leaves cut from plants.

Life Cycle:
From time to time, winged males and females emerge from the nest and perform a brief mating flight. After mating, the males die, and the females lose their wings and return to the ground to start a new colony. Workers gather food, maintain and defend the nest, and tend eggs, larvae, and pupae.

Habitat:
Fields, woodlands, and open areas, in dry to moist soil.

Range:
Florida and Gulf states to Pacific Coast, north to British Columbia.

Discussion:
They have a complex social structure usually consisting of a wingless worker caste composed entirely of sterile females and a reproductive caste made up of winged, fertile males and females. But some species do not have a worker caste, and some reproductives do not have wings. Ants have a slender “waist,” or pedicel, of 1 or 2 beadlike or scalelike segments between the thorax and abdomen. They differ from wasps in having distinctly elbowed antennae. Ants live in colonies in underground tunnels or in galleries in dead wood.

WARNING: These ants will bite if molested.