Carpenter ant infestations can be very serious when they occur indoors, but they also pose a considerable threat on your property outside the home. While they mostly target rotten, decaying, or simply dead wood, they are known to infest healthy trees as well. Let’s take a closer look at the dangers posed by outdoor carpenter ant infestations.
Tree safety
Carpenter ants are not really interested in healthy wood for their colonies at first – they will mostly go for dead wood. However, as the colony grows, they will spread out into wood that would be unsuitable at the beginning of a colony. So if you have trees in your backyard that have some dead wood attached to them, these trees are at risk of infestation. Once the colony gets going, more and more parts of the tree start to die, until the tree itself is completely dead.
The threat of spreading
The main threat of having carpenter ants in the backyard is that they can spread to the home. For example, if carpenter ants infest a tree stump or a pile of firewood, they wouldn’t be that much of a concern. However, these colonies will have the chance to grow larger and larger, until they reach maturity and start sending out swarmers. The swarmers will fly out from their colonies and look for new wood to infest. This is when they could reach the home and start an infestation there.
Removing outdoor carpenter ant infestations
Carpenter ant infestations are removed using baits, since the wood will protect the colony from direct application insecticides. It may take a few weeks for the baits to kill off the colony, but they are almost always effective.
Bait can also be used as a way to prevent future infestations. By having ant baits around your property, you can catch any future carpenter ant colony before it gets out of hand. The baits can also protect against other dangerous ant species such as fire ants.
Other preventive measures that can be taken include broadcast treatment insecticides outside the home, and residual insecticides inside it. These two types of insecticides are designed to protect an area for up to six months and kill any insect that comes into contact with them
For more information on how to deal with outdoor carpenter ant infestations, or if you have an infestation and you need professional help to remove it, contact us today.