Access to the outside may be through natural openings, or the ants may cut openings where none exist naturally. Carpenter ants keep occupied galleries clean. So look for removed wood in the form of a coarse sawdust-like material, which they push from the nest. This often results in a cone-shaped pile accumulating just below the nest entrance hole. This pile may include, in addition to the wood fragments, other debris from the nest, including bits of soil, dead ants, parts of insects and remnants of other food they ate.
Carpenter Ants are omnivorous .
This is, their diets include a great variety of both animal and plant foods. The diet of carpenter ants is quite varied and includes living and dead insects, honeydew from aphids, sweets, meat, and fats. They do not eat wood. Workers leave the colony in late afternoon or early evening, forage during the night, and return to the colony in the early morning hours. They carry food back to the nest intact or ingested and later feed it to non-foraging members in the nest.