Carpenter ants are a common sight for many homeowners, often appearing as large, dark insects exploring indoor spaces. Understanding their habits is important for identifying their presence and managing infestations. Their activities can impact structures, so understanding their diet and behavior is important for homeowners.
What Carpenter Ants Really Eat
Carpenter ants are omnivores with a varied and opportunistic diet, consuming both plant and animal matter. Their primary food sources include sugary substances, such as honeydew produced by aphids and scale insects, plant nectar, and fruit juices. Indoors, they readily consume household sweets like honey, syrup, sugar, and jelly. Beyond sugary foods, carpenter ants also seek protein and fats. They feed on living and dead insects, including other arthropods, which provide necessary protein for colony growth and development. Worker ants carry solid food items, such as insect carcasses, back to the nest to feed the larvae, which primarily require protein for their development. Indoors, they also consume pet food, meats, and greasy crumbs.
The Wood Connection
Despite their name, carpenter ants do not consume wood for nutrition, unlike termites. Their mandibles excavate and tunnel through wood, creating smooth galleries and nests for shelter and raising their young. This excavation produces a sawdust-like material known as “frass,” often including wood shavings and insect body parts, which indicates their presence. Carpenter ants prefer to nest in moist, decaying, or damaged wood, though they can extend tunnels into sound wood. They establish parent colonies outdoors in stumps or trees, and may form satellite colonies indoors in areas like wall voids, insulation, or near water sources, where their mechanical hollowing of wood can compromise structural integrity if left unaddressed.
Foraging and Food Sourcing
Carpenter ants are primarily nocturnal foragers, active from dusk until dawn. They establish distinct trails between their nests and food sources, using pheromones and visual cues to navigate. These chemical trails guide worker ants to profitable food locations, reinforcing the path. Foraging ants can travel significant distances, sometimes up to 300 feet from their nest, to find food both outdoors and indoors. Worker ants collect food, carrying it back to the nest or ingesting it for regurgitation to other colony members, including the queen and larvae; moisture also attracts them, as they often nest in damp wood, which can lead them to areas where food or water might be present, such as around leaky pipes or sinks.