Carpenter Ants Reveal Character

Carpenter ants are now swarming in homes throughout Texas. Besides signaling the end of winter, carpenter ants can also signal whether your company can be trusted to provide honest advice about pest risks.

Of course the presence of swarming carpenter ants means that a carpenter ant nest resides somewhere in the structure. But is this really a problem? Most entomologists and experienced Texas PMPs will say no (carpenter ant species and behavior and damage potential are different in other parts of the U.S.). Small carpenter ant colonies that swarm once a year and otherwise cause no problems to the homeowner need no aggressive pest control. The fact is that Texas carpenter ants rarely cause damage to structural wood, mostly choosing to nest in void areas between studs or behind insulation in walls.

I believe it pays to be upfront with customers about the real risks, or lack thereof, of not treating carpenter ants. Many customers will want carpenter ant control even if they know that their home is not is danger. Even though they are not wood-destroyers, carpenter ants can be a nuisance by continually entering the living areas of a house. Many customers will be repelled by their presence and be willing to pay for control service in any case. Your other prospective customers will greatly appreciate an honest assessment of the situation, and be relieved that they don't really have to spend a lot of money to protect their home. For the latter category of customer, I am pretty sure you will be the first one they will call or refer to a neighbor when a more serious pest problem arises.

Yesterday my wife and I met with an energy auditor who had come to give us a free assessment of the energy efficiency of our home--a service that is subsidized by our electric delivery company. We talked about the different philosophies of companies who offer this service and learned that some companies charge for weatherproofing and others do it as part of the free audit. The companies who offer free weatherproofing typically use a hard sales routine to sell other improvements that the customer may or may not need. Our auditor's company takes the other approach and uses the free audit as a chance to explain their other services (detailed computerized energy audits, weatherproofing and energy efficient windows--all for a fee, of course).

I greatly appreciated the lack of pressurized sales pitch. After our talk, I felt convinced that this company would give me something for my money and would tell me when I would or wouldn't benefit from an energy upgrade.

As a consumer I am more likely to establish a relationship with a company I can trust, compared to the one who leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth (even if I succumb to their aggressive tactics). In the case of carpenter ants, every pest control company has a choice between scaring a sale out of someone (if you don't treat carpenter ants will tear down your home!) and providing the customer with the facts and letting them decide.

Honesty is even more important among educated consumers today. An increasing number of people who call you to their homes have already researched the subject online and will recognize when a salesperson is blowing smoke. Swarming season is a great time to establish a reputation with prospective customers and can lead to later, legitimate services (Can we call you back in two months to see if these ants have become a nuisance in your home?).

In today's economic climate I think we want customers who will stick with us through tough times, who trust us and who will gladly tell others about the good work we do. Carpenter ant season can help reveal which of us are worthy of those kinds of customers.

Texas carpenter ants are lazy

My entomology career got its inauspicious start twenty-eight years ago when I interviewed for a pest control technician's job in Seattle, Washington. I knew I was interested in entomology at the time, had just graduated from college, and needed a job to help my wife go back to school. Little did I know how much of the next one and a half years of my life would be attending to carpenter ants.

Washington state, I learned, grows two things really well: slugs and carpenter ants. The slugs that fed on my garden tomatoes grew up to six inches long. The carpenter ants were everywhere. As I recall, about 75% of the accounts I carried as a residential pest control technician had something to do with carpenter ants. Carpenter ant damage is to Washington homes, about what termite damage is to Texas homes. I've since learned that the carpenter ant species plaguing Washingtonians is Campanotus modoc, the western black carpenter ant.

Since migrating south I've yet to see good evidence that Texas carpenter ants pose any significant threat to wooden structures. The worst damage I ever encountered was in my own home, where some carpenter ants had hollowed out some galleries in the foam insulation in a bathroom wall. On an athletic scale for carpenter ants, where C. modoc are the Superbowl champs, our wimpy Texas ants couldn't make it past the sofa with television remote and beer in hand.

The Texas carpenter ant community consists of different species than the one that pay the bills for Washington PMPs. Most Texas species have little interest in boring into solid wood, although they will nest in walls of buildings, and can be a nuisance. One difference is that colony sizes of carpenter ants in Texas are much smaller than C. modoc colonies, which may contain over 100,000 ants.

So a few weeks ago I was interested to receive this image from Jay Jorns, with JNJ Pest Control in Katy, Texas. It shows the contents of a Sentricon termite below-ground monitoring station (with sensor strip) that had apparently become home to a small colony of carpenter ants.

The picture interested me because it shows the clean galleries typical of the structure-damaging carpenter ants of Washington and the eastern U.S., and because the station was checked regularly, it was unlikely that the ants had merely moved into termite-damaged wood. It was real wood damage, even if not from a home.

Jay sent me a follow-up sample of these ants, and they turned out to be the black carpenter ant, Campanotus pennsylvanicus. Although range maps show C. pennsylvanicus is found throughout all but the far western panhandle and far southern parts of Texas, it is not a common pest ant in the state, to my knowledge.

On the other hand, this carpenter ant is the principal structure-infesting ant in the east and upper midwestern parts of the U.S., where it is known to do structural damage. So why not so much a problem in Texas? I'm not sure. I'm hesitant to say that the black carpenter ant will never infest indoor homes in Texas, given their record in other parts of the country. But of all the carpenter ants in Texas, this species probably has the greatest potential for structural damage.

For anyone reading this blog, I am interested in seeing pictures of carpenter ant damage from anywhere in the U.S. Send me your images and I will post them online along with information about where the damage occurred (city, state) and your name (O fame!). Anyone from Texas who can show me bona fide carpenter ant damage to sound wood in a structure (not carpenter ants living in old termite galleries), I will send a copy of the very useful booklet, Ant Genera of Texas and praise you for your contribution to science on these pages. I look forward to hearing and learning from you.