Continued
If you haven't already realised by now, I live in the good old U.K. where, we don't suffer from carpenter ants, at least I have never heard of any. But the number of requests I get from the U.S.A. about the problem are many, so I thought that I had better cover the subject in these pages...

Characteristics
Carpenter ants are among the largest species that you will find in the States. Like other ant species, carpenter ants are social, i.e, they live in a colony and have several "castes" or adult forms that perform different jobs in the colony. The queen usually reaches 9/16 inch in length. There are several sizes of workers that range in size from 1/4 to 7/16 inch. All of these ants are adults regardless of their size, but only the queen produces offspring in the nest. Immature ants (larvae) are white, legless, and maggot-looking in appearance. They remain in the nest and are fed by the workers ( which are split in to "major"and "minor"workers ). The larvae develop into pupae, which are tan and capsule-shaped. Eventually, new adults emerge from these pupae. Adult ants will vary in colour depending upon the species. The black carpenter ant (the one we are going to concentrate on), is the species that most commonly nests in homes, and is primarily black in colour. Other carpenter ant species may be more reddish-brown to yellow in colour.

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