Carpenter Ants

[Steve Roxberg]

I had a dead tree in the yard, it was alive last year and then never leafed out this spring. I had it removed today and it was hollow and full of Carpenter Ants.

Is there a poision I can spread around the yard to make it impossible or harder for them to find a new home? I have dogs that live in the backyard so that is a factor that must be taken into account.

I have lots of other trees nearby as well, is there anything I should do to protect them or the house?

[Mark Rios]

One thing I would do is to sell them a whole truck load of carpenter tool belts and put them to work.

Make a bunch of money off of them and THEN poison them.

[Dennis Peacock]

Steve,

If you can find it, Diazinon. Works very well for ant, ticks, fleas, beetles, and such...but is safe for pets, plants, and humans.

If you can't find Diazinon?
Then you can use DeltaGard G which is "like" Diazinon but this will have to be water dissolved to protect animals like birds from poisoning from the use of DeltaGard G.

Another choice would be Talstar. It's a manmade type pyrethroid and is safe to use and is not a real threat to birds and such around your home.

Well, that's all I know as I have had to fight these ants before and that's the results from my research and experience.

[Joe Pelonio]

When I had a dose of them I went to a local DIY pest control store and bought a legal version of what the pros use. Since then the laws changed and they had to go out of business. But, I found out that you can use a more natural pesticide.

Boric Acid is available at hardware and/or drug stores, and is a safer alternative. It's a powder that you sprinkle and they go in it and it's deadly to them as well as roaches, silverfish, and most other crawling pests.

I thought it was safe for humans and pets but google it or at least ask when you buy it.

[Chris Padilla]

Steve,

Seriously consider bringing in a pro to at least evaluate your situation. It could be isolated to that tree or it could be worse than you thought.

[Fred Voorhees]

Steve,

Seriously consider bringing in a pro to at least evaluate your situation. It could be isolated to that tree or it could be worse than you thought.

I'm with Chris on this one. I had at one time a decent battle with carpenter ants. It ain't pretty! I, and I am absolutely positive that my wife, remembers one time we came back from somewhere and we entered out kitchen and everything we moved we scattered more carpenter ants. I quickly got out the ant spray and after a while, the entire kitchen counter looked like a darned ant battle field - after the battle and the ants lost!

Back amid that time, we had two built in air conditioners from the previous owners. One was in an upstairs guest bedroom and the carpenter ants had decided to make their egg chamber in the sill of the opening for the conditioner. I ended up having to open up the side of the house and rip off the sheathing and sister a bunch of studs to the older ones since quite a few of them were absolute toast. It was messy, it was ugly and I never want to go through something like that again.

We live in the country and with that, you accept a certain amount of "nature" to share your home, but ants are not one that I care to co-habitate with ever again. I'm always on the look out for them.

[Ken Garlock]

Take a look at Amdro Ant Block (http://www.amdro.com/AntBlock/index.html) . The ant block MSDS only says to keep out the reach of children, and avoid prolonged contact with skin.

We keep a gallon container of Amdro fire ant posion on on hand all the time. Just sprinkle around the edge of the mound, and in about 2 days they are dead.

[Jim Becker]

I wish I had a penny for each and every one of the carpenter ants on this 4 acre property! This is one reason the wood deck is going away "real soon now" when we do the addition project...they even like to eat treated wood at some point, at least around here. There are also several species of the little buggers as it turns out.

I do the borax thing as we do have birds...