When you see tiny holes and sawdust-looking scraps building up around the wooden structures and surfaces in your home, it’s easy to assume that you have carpenter ants, powderpost beetles, or worse, termites.
However, there are some other culprits in Wisconsin that bore holes into our wooden homes. Some researchers estimate that powderpost beetles are the second leading contributor to insect-based property damage in the United States.
To learn what pest is tearing through your walls, read on for help from the Batzner Pest Control technicians.
What Do Carpenter Ants Look Like?
Early identification of one species in particular can prevent structural damage to your home, and you should keep an eye out for it this summer: the carpenter ant. Carpenter ants have a few distinctive features to help identify them:
- The middle section of their bodies (the thorax) is rounded, and they have a single node connecting their thorax and abdomen.
- Other common ants will have either an uneven thorax, two nodes between the thorax and abdomen, or both.
- Carpenter ants also tend to be larger than other species.
Unfortunately, they are still so small that it is very difficult for the untrained eye to distinguish between carpenter ants and other less harmful species. For this reason, it is best to contact a pest control professional if there are any signs of a potential carpenter ant infestation.
How to Identify Carpenter Ant Infestations
Once carpenter ants have been correctly identified, the next step is to determine if there is a nest inside your house. Seeing a few carpenter ants inside your home in late spring and early summer is not definitive proof of an indoor nest, as they are most likely just looking for food or water for their outdoor colony.
However, if any of the following are seen, it is likely that some carpenter ants have made their home inside of yours:
- Frass (fine, powdery wood particles and insect parts, like sawdust) falling from interior wood. As you may know, carpenter ants do their damage by excavating tunnels in wood for their colony to live in. Unlike mosquitoes, however, they don’t eat the wood. Instead, they deposit it as frass.
- Many winged ants flying inside your house (the winged carpenter ants are capable of reproducing, and they may be looking to set up additional colonies inside your home).
- Consistent presence or sightings of many wingless worker ants in rooms other than the kitchen.
- Carpenter ants inside the house between fall and early spring.
Because these indicators are small and require attention to detail and consistent record keeping, they can easily be missed. Carpenter ants’ peak activity also occurs during the night, so they often go undetected by homeowners. A trained service specialist who inspects your home and installs monitoring traps is a much more reliable source for identifying infestations inside your home.
What Are Powderpost Beetles?
The name “powderpost beetles” actually refers to a category of beetles that live in and eat through hardwoods. Unlike carpenter ants, who only chew through wood to create tunnels to lay their eggs in, powderpost beetles consume the wood that they chew through. When powderpost beetles eat wood, they leave behind fine wooden flakes that resemble sawdust.
Look for these features to help you identify powderpost beetles on your property:
- Beetles that range from 1/8-1/4” in length
- Narrow bodies with dark red, brown, or black colors
- Long wings and flight capability
Differences Between Powderpost Beetles and Carpenter Ants
Depending on which pest you’re dealing with, you will have to take different pest control measures. So, how can you tell if the damage to your wooden structures has been caused by powderpost beetles or carpenter ants?
- Start by looking around the areas of damage to try to find active pest activity.
- Next, look at the texture of the damage. Powderpost beetles bore holes from approximately .03 to .3 inches in diameter, depending on the size of the beetle. Carpenter ants’ damage is messier-looking with the appearance of tears or striations.
- Both pests leave behind sawdust-like scraps where they’ve bored. If you find this around your house, look nearby to try to identify the damage.
Do You Have Termites or Carpenter Ants?
Both of these pests are wood-destroying insects that, in the swarmer stage, are commonly mistaken for one another. Termite and carpenter ant swarmers are active around the same time of the year and, from afar, look quite similar. Although they are both destructive, these wood-boring insects are quite different.
Telling the difference between flying ants vs termites can be difficult if you don’t know what to look for. You might actually be dealing with carpenter ants.
Carpenter Ants vs Termites: How to Tell Them Apart
In the swarmer stage, termites and carpenter ants look very alike. Carpenter ant swarmers are black in color with slightly red coloring at times. Their wings are translucent with a reddish-brown hue. The biggest difference is that carpenter ants measure 1/2″–5/8″ with antennae bent at a 45-degree angle.
Termite swarmers are dark brown to black in color and measure 3/8″ long, including the wings. Their wings are a translucent to slightly milky or smoky color, may overlap, and are typically as long as or slightly longer than the body. This is an easy visual clue to differentiate them from carpenter ants.
The first step to getting rid of the wood-boring insects in your home to discern which ones you’re dealing with. Here are some features to look for to tell apart termites vs flying ants:
- Bodies: Carpenter ants are larger than termites with a pinched “waist,” longer antennae, and forewings that are larger than their hindwings. With a broader body and even wings, termites have more consistent features.
- Visibility: Termites are very discreet about their infestations, but carpenter ants are more likely to be seen and leave evidence of their presence. When carpenter ants bore through wood, they leave wood shavings and discarded wings near their holes.
- Diet: Carpenter ants don’t eat the wood that they drill through, which is why you’ll see wood shavings near their nesting sites. Termites eat the cellulose within the wood, leaving infestation sites with a stripped, striated appearance.
Main Differences Between Carpenter Ants and Termites
When it comes to these two wood-destroying insects, one is much more feared than the other.
Carpenter Ants
- Typically establish nests in wood that is already in decay, and later expand into sound wood, insulation, or wall voids.
- Their damage is not usually visible. When it is, you can notice that the galleries they excavate appear to have been sanded.
- For the most part, carpenter ants do not create the extensive damage termites do.
Termites
- Usually make their way into a structure around basement windows, doorways, under siding, porches, or any structure in contact with the soil.
- Established colonies can range from 60,000 to over a million workers and can consume nearly 5 grams of wood per day.
- Termites are significantly more dangerous than the carpenter ant, as they can cause much more damage in a short period of time.
Carpenter Ant Damage vs Termite Damage Signs
It is helpful to know the difference between carpenter ant damage and termite damage to quickly assess which pest you have on your property. Carpenter ants often find their way into buildings through decayed wood, working their way to sound wood. Finding a lot of ants near damaged wood outside your home or business is usually an indicator of a carpenter ant infestation.
Termite damage is usually prefaced by mud tubes popping up in the soil around your building. Once inside, termites eat away at the cellulose within sound wood, creating a thin, layered appearance. Carpenter ant damage looks more holey and cavernous than termite damage.
Wood-Boring Pest Control in Wisconsin
The best pest control is always proper prevention, which means keeping a tidy yard and keeping a constant watch for insect infestations. However, if you’re already dealing with insects tearing through the wood in your home or business in Wisconsin, you can always reach out to the team at Batzner Pest Control.
Our team can thoroughly inspect your Wisconsin home or business for wood-destroying insects and help protect you from them year-round! We gear our approach towards teaching our customers about how the pests choose their homes to infest and what they can do to prevent future problems.
For a free quote, contact us today!
