Ants Ants!!

hohadcr

We are up in Quebec, Canada.

It has been a couple of weeks that we have ants in the kitchen. They are about 1/2 inch long. Some of them have a white spot on their tails. Some of them would stand up and cross the front "feet" like flies.

I put down Raid ant traps. I watch the ants passing by it quickly, and some other ants check in to the traps a bit, and backed out and left the traps.

What kind of ants are these? Very worried, hope they are not the carpenter ants that will eat up the building!!

Thanks for your commnets...

joecaption

Figure out what type they are before trying to treat for them.
If it turns out to be a wood eating ants just treating the ants will not fix the real problum.
http://www.worldofpestcontrol.com/Id...ation-Ant.html

hohadcr

Thanks, joecaption,

According to the link, the only kind of ants whose workers would be about 1/2 inch long would be carpenter ants!

So Carpenter ants it is?

joecaption

That's a bad thing if it's carpender ants.
They need moist wood to live. Moist wood means there's some leaks someplace outside of the house.

hohadcr

Sad to share the pic of one of the ants I took.
I am pretty sure they are carpenter ants.

I live in the city on a 3rd floor of an attached triplex. My kitchen is kinda in the middle of the place.

How can I get to the moist wood and get rid of the ants....??

Any suggestion?

joecaption

Someone going to have to get a ladder and start checking for leaks.

hohadcr

this is going to be more than what I imagined.

For attached triplex, lateral walls are shared, so leaks may be from the flat roof shingles?

joecaption

Shingles on a flat roof? I sure hope that's not the case.

dougp23

Joe, when we sold our home last year, the buyers demanded that we reshingle the roof. The back of the roof was almost flat, with rolled asphalt. I had to convince them that I was not ripping them off by NOT doing shingles on something so flat....

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Pardon any typos, my IPad has a mind of it's own for spelling corrections!

hohadcr

sorry, i should have said flashings on flat roof....

ddesigns

When I bought the current house I am in it was infested with large carpenter ants. Freaked me out. I hate ants. They had eaten some of the old porch and moved inside. Lots of moisture in the basement and they had burrowed through some of that wood like termites. yuk. I wasn't sure where their nest was. I bought Grants ant killer and it killed them all. I used a few bottles of the granules in different areas. Must have taken it back to the queen cause it killed them all. Good luck.