They commonly excavate galleries or tunnels in rotting or sound trees and will readily infest the wooden portions of your home. They prefer to excavate wood damaged by fungus and are often found in conjunction with moisture problems. The adult winged female or queen loses her wings soon after mating with the smaller male and selects a nesting site where she secludes herself while raising the first brood of workers. These workers are very small but take over the care of the immature and the queen after they mature. Future workers are usually larger than those from the first brood because they receive better care.
All workers are wingless.
Carpenter ants may enter the home while foraging for food. However, the appearance of large numbers of winged adults inside a home indicates that the nest exists in the home. The workers will often expel fibrous sawdust from the nest through slit-like openings in the surface of the wood. These piles of sawdust are good signs to look for when trying to locate a colony in an infested home. It is important to locate the source of the ants and their nest.