Yes, and sawdust is one of the single best signs that you have a carpenter ant infestation. Carpenter ants don’t eat wood, instead preferring to carve galleries and push the debris out through small openings.
Carpenter ants, true to their name, are builders. They leave behind sawdust like they’re running their own wood shop. And in a way, they are. They’re building galleries so they can live inside of wood such as the structural framing of your home.
This kind of sawdust, to use the technical name, is frass. It looks coarse and fibrous, more like pencil shavings than powder. It typically contains fragments of dead ants, insect legs, and other debris the colony has cleaned out during their excavation. If you’re seeing packed mud in galleries, you have a different problem: termites.
Where ants appear tells you a lot about where nests are. You can often find it below windowsills and along basement beams and sill plates. Sometimes you can find it at the base of door frames, under porch posts and deck framing, and near skylights. It sits under slit-shaped openings in the wood, which is the vent that ants push debris through.
The presence of carpenter ants usually points to another problem: moisture issues. Carpenter ants cannot excavate sound dry lumber, instead focusing their attention on wood softened by moisture. The presence of carpenter ants, in other words, suggests you have a leak.
If you suspect you have carpenter ants, or if you see them outright (they’re large black ants), the first thing to do is locate the main nest and any satellite nests. Then treat those nests and correct the source of moisture. After that, seal up any entrances you suspect they are using to get into your home. A professional can help you do this, and it’s wise to reach out to one since carpenter ants do a lot of structural damage.
If sawdust piles have appeared in your home, Mosquito Squad of Grand Rapids can help. Mosquito Squad treats the ant colonies outside your home and the entry points they use. This will help you protect the wood your house depends on.
