Carpenter ants and termites are two commonly confused pests who have one major thing in common: they pose a huge threat to the wood in your home. These two pests get mixed up because they both burrow their way into wood and cause extensive damage to homes all across the nation. There are several key differences between carpenter ants and termites. However, the most important of these is how to eliminate them.

Termite Basics

Termites beat out all other pests as the #1 force of nature that causes damage to homes. These voracious insects will eat their way through the wood in your home, ruining its structural integrity and causing extensive—and expensive!—damage. How widespread are they? Consider this: termites outnumber humans on the planet 4:1. That’s over thirty billion termites on earth that infiltrate as many as five million homes per year.

Facts like these make it easy to understand why pest experts in Missouri agree that there are two types of homes:

  1. Those that have termites.
  2. Those that will GET termites.

Your yard is likely already full of termites, and your home could be next on the menu.

Carpenter Ants 101

Unlike termites, carpenter ants do not eat wood. Instead, they use their mandibles as a tool to chew and thus carve out elaborate galleries in wood, preferably wood that is already damp and decaying. While their motivation is different from that of termites, the hollowed-out wood they create likewise causes severe structural damage to your home.

A single ant mound can house as many as 500,000 ants. Imagine hundreds of thousands of these efficient, well-organized workers chewing their way through the wood in your home. An invasion of carpenter ants can be a serious problem and difficult to eliminate on your own, which is why you should enlist the services of a pest control specialist.

How to Get Rid of Termites

There are two ways to handle a termite infestation:

  1. Drill into the concrete foundation, apply poison, and keep them away temporarily.
  2. Use Sentricon and kill them all.

Sentricon is a baiting system designed to eliminate the risk termites pose to your home—for good. Here’s how it works: McCarthy Pest and Termite Control experts install bait stations on all sides of your home and service them as needed. The bait used is more attractive to termites than wood, and it contains an active ingredient that prevents them from molting. Ultimately, this eliminates entire termite colonies.

This non-invasive method is the termite treatment system used to protect national landmarks all over the country, including the White House, the Statue of Liberty, Jackson Square in New Orleans, and the ‘Iolani Palace in Honolulu. It is also the preferred treatment system of homeowners all across America.

Exterminating Carpenter Ants

Often DIY-extermination efforts not only fail to kill off a colony, but also trigger a process called “budding,” by which the ants move around your home or yard and establish new colonies. An ant colony can relocate in a single day.

Rather than repeat a frustrating, ineffective extermination method on your own, contact a St. Charles or ST. LOUIS pest control specialist to handle this problem. Experts from McCarthy Pest & Termite Control will take the time to do a thorough inspection and locate the colonies. We destroy each colony from the inside-out using a commercial bait that kills the ants for good and stops the infestation in its tracks.

Whether it is carpenter ants or termites plaguing your home, McCarthy Pest & Termite Control can help. Contact us today to learn more about our services and schedule an inspection.