Carpenter Ants Revealed: What Do These Pests Really Eat?

Carpenter ants are one of the most common and destructive pests that can invade your home. These large, black or red ants are infamous for chewing through wood and causing structural damage to your home. However, despite their reputation for being wood-damaging pests, carpenter ants actually feed on a wide variety of substances.

What Carpenter Ants Eat: A Diverse Diet

While carpenter ants are known for their wood-boring habits, their diet is far more varied. Unlike termites, which primarily consume wood, carpenter ants are omnivores. They feed on both plant and animal-based materials. Here are some of the primary food sources for carpenter ants:

1. Sugary Substances

  • Why It’s a Favorite: Carpenter ants are particularly drawn to sugary foods. They are known to seek out sweet liquids, especially during the warmer months.
  • What to Look For: Carpenter ants are often attracted to syrup, honey, and sugary drinks. You might find them around food spills, fruit, or open containers of sweet food items. The ants consume the sugary liquids and then return to their nests to share the food with the rest of the colony.

2. Protein and Fats

  • Why It’s a Necessary Part of Their Diet: Carpenter ants also require proteins and fats to thrive. These substances help fuel their active lifestyles.
  • What to Look For: Carpenter ants will often forage for meat, including dead insects, animal carcasses, and even grease or fat from kitchen areas. They might invade your pantry to access high-protein foods like pet food or dried meats, or they may target trash bins that contain leftover food scraps.

3. Wood and Plant Material

  • Why It’s Not Just for Nesting: Carpenter ants are infamous for chewing through wood, but they don’t eat the wood. Instead, they use it to build their nests.
  • What to Look For: Carpenter ants chew through wood to create tunnels, but the wood itself is not a primary food source. They will, however, use the wood to create a safe nesting area close to food sources. You may find their nests in the hollowed-out wood inside walls, wooden beams, or even in trees. Sometimes, carpenter ants will target trees that have decayed or are already weakened.

4. Dead Insects and Other Organic Matter

  • Why It Works for Their Colony: Carpenter ants will scavenge dead insects and other organic matter, which can be found in and around your home.
  • What to Look For: If you see carpenter ants around dead insects, it’s a sign that they are taking advantage of the food source. Dead ants, termites, and other pests provide a rich source of protein for carpenter ants.

How Carpenter Ants Find Their Food

Carpenter ants are excellent foragers and can travel long distances from their nests in search of food. They tend to follow established trails and will return to the colony once they’ve found a food source. They use their antennae to detect food sources, and they communicate with other ants by releasing pheromones that guide them to the food.

You might not always notice carpenter ants foraging for food, as they are most active during the night when it’s cooler. However, if you spot them during the day, it’s likely that they are scouting for food or returning to the nest.

How to Prevent Carpenter Ants from Invading Your Home

Knowing what carpenter ants eat is important because it can help you eliminate the food sources that attract them. Here are a few tips to keep carpenter ants away from your home:

1. Seal Food Sources

  • Why It Works: Eliminating easy access to food is the first step in preventing carpenter ants from invading.
  • How to Do It: Store food in airtight containers, clean up spills immediately, and make sure trash bins are tightly sealed. Avoid leaving pet food out overnight, as it can attract ants.

2. Control Moisture Levels

  • Why It Works: Carpenter ants are attracted to moist environments, and they often nest in damp wood.
  • How to Do It: Fix any leaky pipes or roof issues in your home. Make sure that basements and attics are well-ventilated and dry. Use dehumidifiers in damp areas to keep the environment less inviting to ants.

3. Eliminate Nesting Sites

  • Why It Works: Carpenter ants are known to build nests inside wood, especially decaying wood.
  • How to Do It: Inspect your home for any signs of damaged or decaying wood. Seal any cracks and gaps in your foundation, walls, and windows to prevent ants from entering. Trim tree branches that come into contact with your home to discourage ants from entering via the trees.

4. Call Pest Control Experts

  • Why It Works: If carpenter ants are already in your home, it’s best to seek professional help to remove them.
  • How to Do It: If you’ve spotted carpenter ants or suspect an infestation, contact pest control experts for an assessment. Professionals can safely remove the ants, treat the infestation, and help prevent future problems. For comprehensive Pest Control Services in Melbourne, experts use advanced techniques to ensure your home remains pest-free.

Conclusion

Carpenter ants may seem like harmless pests, but they can cause serious damage to your home if left unchecked. While they don’t eat wood like termites, they use wood to build nests and can weaken the structure of your home. Understanding what carpenter ants eat can help you eliminate food sources and take the necessary steps to prevent an infestation. By sealing food sources, controlling moisture, eliminating nesting sites, and calling in pest control experts if needed, you can keep your home safe from these destructive pests.

Published on: February 14, 2025

Flies are one of the most common and widespread pests around the world. We often see them buzzing around our food or landing on surfaces, but there is much more to these tiny creatures than meets the eye. 

1. Flies Have Incredibly Fast Reflexes

  • Why It’s Fascinating: Flies are known for their lightning-fast reflexes, allowing them to avoid swats and other threats with ease.
  • How It Works: A fly can detect and react to movement in less than a tenth of a second. This ability makes them very difficult to catch or swat, and is a key reason why they can fly away so quickly when you try to smack them.

2. Flies Can Taste With Their Feet

  • Why It’s Fascinating: Unlike humans, flies don’t use their mouths to taste food. Instead, they have taste sensors on their feet.
  • How It Works: When a fly lands on food, it uses its feet to taste the surface before it eats. The fly’s feet contain taste receptors that help it determine if the food is suitable for consumption.

3. Flies Can Fly in Any Direction

  • Why It’s Fascinating: Flies are capable of flying in any direction, including upside down.
  • How It Works: Flies have specialized wings and muscle control that allow them to change directions rapidly. This gives them the ability to hover, fly forward, backward, and even fly upside down with ease.

4. They Have Two Compound Eyes

  • Why It’s Fascinating: A fly’s eyes are made up of thousands of tiny lenses, giving them almost a 360-degree view of their surroundings.
  • How It Works: Flies have large compound eyes that contain thousands of individual lenses (facets). This allows them to see an incredibly wide range of motion and detect motion quickly, making it hard to swat them.

5. Flies Have Short Lifespans

  • Why It’s Fascinating: Despite their small size, flies live surprisingly short lives.
  • How It Works: The average lifespan of a common housefly is only 2 to 4 weeks, but during that time, they can lay hundreds of eggs. This rapid reproduction rate contributes to the large populations of flies in many areas.

6. Flies Can Carry Diseases

  • Why It’s Fascinating: Flies are not just annoying; they are also capable of carrying and transmitting diseases.
  • How It Works: Flies are known to spread diseases like E. coli, salmonella, and even the Zika virus. When they land on contaminated surfaces, their bodies pick up bacteria, which they can then transfer to food, utensils, and surfaces around your home.

7. Flies Have a Strong Sense of Smell

  • Why It’s Fascinating: Flies rely heavily on their sense of smell to find food and mates.
  • How It Works: Flies can smell food from several miles away and are drawn to strong scents, such as decaying organic matter. This ability helps them locate food and breeding sites.

8. Flies Don’t Actually Eat Solid Food

  • Why It’s Fascinating: Flies can’t chew solid food like humans and many other animals can.
  • How It Works: Flies use a specialized feeding tube called a proboscis, which they use to suck up liquids. To eat solid food, flies first regurgitate digestive enzymes that liquefy the food, allowing them to drink it up.

9. Flies Can See in Slow Motion

  • Why It’s Fascinating: A fly’s brain processes visual information much faster than a human’s, allowing them to perceive time more slowly.
  • How It Works: Flies have a high flicker fusion rate, meaning they can see and process multiple frames per second. This makes their perception of time slower than ours, which is why they can often dodge swats so effectively.

10. Flies Are Great At Reproducing

  • Why It’s Fascinating: Flies are highly prolific breeders, and a single pair of flies can produce thousands of offspring in just a short period.
  • How It Works: A female fly can lay up to 500 eggs in her lifetime, which hatch into larvae within a day or two. The larvae (maggots) feed on organic matter, eventually pupating into adult flies, starting the cycle over again.

Conclusion

Flies may be small and often irritating, but they have some truly fascinating traits that make them uniquely adapted to their environment. From their fast reflexes and complex eyes to their ability to carry diseases, flies are much more than just a nuisance. By understanding how they operate, we can take better steps to control their populations and minimize the risks they pose to our health. If you are struggling with a fly infestation, don’t hesitate to reach out to emergency pest control experts in Melbourne for effective solutions to keep your home pest-free.

Published on: February 7, 2025

By CBD Pest Control Melbourne