Smaller Carpenter Ant Camponotus nearcticus Emery Carpenter ants are a nuisance by their presence when found in parts of the home such as the kitchen, bathroom, living room and other quarters. They do not eat wood, but often remove quantities of it to expand their nest size. However, if only one to two large wingless ants are erratically crawling, they may simply be foraging for food with the nest located outside. Outdoors, they are frequently seen running over plants and tree trunks or living in moist, partly rotten wood stumps. Identification Carpenter ants are among the largest ants found in homes and live in colonies containing three castes consisting of winged and wingless queens, winged males and different sized workers.
Winged males are much smaller than winged queens.
Workers have some brown on them while queens are black. Workers have large heads and a small thorax while adult swarmers have a smaller head and large thorax. They have constricted waists, elbowed antennas and the reproductive's forewings are larger than the hindwings, transparent or brownish and not easily removed. Adults are usually black with some species red, brown or yellow occurring on parts of the body and legs. The egg stage takes about 24 days, larval stage 21 days and pupal stage 21 days or about 66 days from egg to adult at 70 to 90 degrees F. Cool weather may lengthen this period up to 10 months.