Decks are a fun place for you, your neighbors and friends, and your family to hang out. It’s a floor outside that stops your shes from getting dirty and it makes it easier to do things like cook, read and relax outside. That deck is probably one of the most important parts of your house but it holds dangers. From rot to infestation a deck is constantly under fire. The sun beats down on it with powerful UV rays that can warp and dry out the wood till it’s gray and shriveled. One of the greatest dangers to your deck is the insect known as the carpenter ant. The carpenter ant is a large black ant that can be multiple centimeters long. They have large mandibles on their face that can slice through wood like it’s nothing. Those same mandibles can bite you and do serious damage while injecting their saliva which contains formic acid. This acid burns and can make the wound very painful. If your deck is infested then your children and pets will have trouble playing on it. You may get bitten while having a meal. The ants are not after you, they are drones and will ignore you if you ignore them. But when sleeping or not paying attention and you step on one or rollover on one, they will bite you.
They start their nests away from the house for safety and then infest it when the time is right. This means your old tree stump or that pile of firewood, the old shed in the back that falling apart, these are places they will infest first. You may not even notice or care. They are just ants wandering around. They will then multiply and make more nests as new queens mate with fertile males. The workers are all sterile females. They do not mate, only work. They take care of the queen’s eggs and feed them small insects and other invertebrates, plant juices, and the sweet honeydew secreted by aphids which are tree-dwelling tiny insects ad the reason holes appear in tree leaves. They are not aggressive but are defensive.
The danger of the carpenter ant is that it will burrow into the wood of your deck and damage it. They can be hard to notice at first and being ants they are not something most people panic about seeing outside. However, if left unchecked the damage they can do could destroy your deck completely. Carpenter ants can then enter your home and start the same process. Most people do not notice an infestation until it is too late to deal with using domestic products. Deck demolition can treat the insect infestation and take down the damaged deck. An exterior spray of the deck using a powerful commercial-grade pesticide will get rid of the ants on the deck and an exterior tamper-proof ant bait station filled with commercial grade boric acid bait will take care of the ants at the root of the problem. Call now for a quote!