Ants are harmless insects to most people that occasionally bite. While this may be the case for the common ant, it is far from the truth for many other ant species, especially the carpenter ant.
Carpenter ants are some of the strongest and largest ant species that can damage your home’s interior. They also have high formic acids in their mandibles that impart painful bites. Read on to learn more about them and how to deal with carpenter ants!
What Are Carpenter Ants?
Carpenter ants are the ant species that work like carpenters to build their nests. These ants excavate wood to make it hollow and set up their nests. These ants differ from termites because they don’t eat the wood but simply remove it.
Carpenter ants have extremely strong mandibles that help them extract wood from surfaces. They have large colonies with 50,000 ants! Carpenter ants are black, red, tan, brown, or yellow; some even have transparent wings.
Why Is It Important to Control Ant Population?
Most carpenter ants are extremely detrimental to furniture and impact its functionality and durability. It is extremely important to conduct regular furniture pest control and rid your furnishings of them quickly. Here are some reasons why it is necessary to keep them in check:
- Furniture Weakening
Wood is an extremely common material used in most furnishings. Carpenter ants weaken the wood furniture making it unstable and unsafe.
Usually, premium quality builds, and materials are subject to damage caused by these ants and can completely ruin various furniture pieces in your home. Carpenter ants harm the interior space as they can break the furniture causing safety issues.
- Safety Issues
Since the furniture is weakened and potentially hollow, the whole support structure crumbles, and the furniture breaks. It commonly happens in chairs, where if someone uses the furniture, such as sitting on it, it can collapse and break.
It can seriously hurt the user as they might fall through or have splinters. Even worse, they can suffer injuries due to weakened furniture.
Besides the safety issues, they also incur additional costs for the user by changing or replacing the interior furniture. Let’s discuss them in detail below.
- Additional Costs
While furniture pest control may seem costly, the costs incurred will be higher if you replace the products. Besides weakening or breaking a furniture item, some other issues include ant colonies inside the product or visible damage to the furniture, such as bites or scratches.
These issues are only solved by buying a new item, professional maintenance, or fully cleaning the furniture. Though, these options are expensive and aren’t feasible for people compared to conducting regular furniture pest control.
Summing Up!
Carpenter ants are a species of ants that make nests in wood and turn them hollow to do so. They can damage homes through chairs, beds, and other wood furniture.
It is important to take steps against them before an infestation occurs. Professional pest control services like Top Line Pest Control can safely and effectively eradicate pests.
