Carpenter Ant Activity ‘About Normal’ During Past 12 Months

CLEVELAND – For much of the country, carpenter ants are the pest ant species that get PCOs’ phones ringing. As reported in this year's State of the Ant Market sponsored by Syngenta, among all ant species, carpenter ants account for 15 percent of their location's service calls in 2022.

How busy have PMPs been with carpenter ants during the last 12 months? Forty-four percent of those who responded to PCT’s recent poll said carpenter ant activity was “about normal.”

Robert Puckett, associate professor and extension entomologist at Texas A&M University Department of Entomology in College Station, Texas, said carpenter ant activity in his region over the last 12 months“has been "nothing to speak of, really. Nothing unusual.”

Twenty-seven percent indicated carpenter ant activity was “slightly below normal.” Dan Fleischer, president of Pestex, Newtonville, Mass., said carpenter ants have been “slightly down” this past year, but he said hornet activity was up.

About 30 percent of those respondents indicated carpenter ant activity was slightly above (15 percent) or well above (14 percent) normal.

The most common carpenter ant that PMPs in the Pacific Northwest encounter is Camponotus modoc. Billy Oleson, CEO of Peststop, Olympia, Wash., said his company had seen a downtick in carpenter ants in recent years, but “for whatever reason – maybe it's a seven-year cycle thing or it's because more trees are down because of weather – we have seen an uptick this year.”