Ants and wood piles

[Backwoods Savage]

It is said over and over on this forum about ants leaving once the wood is dry. They simply won't stay around unless the wood is wet. I've hesitated posting about this for a long time but now it will be stated. It is pure baloney! Why did I make that statement? As most know, I have a fair sized wood pile that will last a few years. It has been covered so it stays dry and the wood is as you would expect; very dry.

As we quite often do, we have just supplied a family with enough (actually more than enough) wood to get them through the coming heating season. As we were loading the wood into a pickup, on the 3rd row in it was all split white ash. Very dry. Yet, we found a big nest of carpenter ants! Son of a gun, a couple more rows and we found more!

I'm sure there will be some that post about the wood must not have been totally dry, but it was and is extremely dry. I will add that this wood has been covered using galvanized roofing. It has been covered since it was stacked 6 years ago last April. So, how do we explain the ants in this wood pile?

 

[savageactor7]

HUH! never observed that before in seasoned wood. Now those big carpenter ants are the same ants most of us see in wood when we split it right?

 

[oldspark]

You said the 3rd row in, maybe that had something to do with it, maybe they do not like air circulation so the inside rows are more prone for the ants, any thing you read about the ants is they like moisture so I am guessing. I have very little problems with bugs but if I have a few it will be where there is shade for part of the day, the wood that sets in full sun seems to have nothing in it.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Yes, those are the culprits. I've had this happen many times before so this is not an isolated case. It does not happen a lot but we still get some.

Then there is another one. My sister has had some things stored in one of our buildings. We keep it locked and it is very dry in there. Yet, we found a huge nest of those danged things when we got in there over the weekend. I had been in there a few times during last winter, spring and a couple times this summer. I did not see any signs of anything but when we took out some drawers out of a dresser she had stored, there were the ants! Nasty things.

 

[Slow1]

I've had them in my house - very dry areas too, nest up in the attic. I don't think the carpenter ants need damp wood at all.

Our house was built 10 years ago. We had our first run-in with the ants a year later, guess the ants were on the lot first. Anyway, we've been fighting them ever since - well before I started burning wood. I don't buy the "split the wood and they will all die away" theory. Yes they go out of site, but I think they relocate and find a new home... they are good at hiding.

My strategy is to feed them bait every chance I get. Whenever I see one or more I get the can of bait out and sprinkle it around that area. I regularly sprinkle the perimeter of the house and frequently do so around my splitting area since they are often seen there too. These are persistent buggers and can be seriously damaging once they get in the house - we had significant damage found when we did the addition on the back of the house.

Last year I found a nest in the addition! Go figure. This year we've had fewer seen in the house but I'll not be too surprised come fall we'll find another nest being build somewhere in the walls... thus I have to inspect a couple times a year. I think I'm beating them back, but they sure multiply fast and we have so much 'natural habitat' in the back for them to live in that I can't treat.

All this to say - I'm not surprised you found them in your wood pile if you have them in your area and are not actively treating them. Glad you posted so others will take note and not get over confident. I wouldn't store my wood to close to the house for any length of time for exactly this reason.

 

[pyper]

Carpenter ants nest in both moist and dry wood, but prefer wood which is moist.

source: http://www.ca.uky.edu/entomology/entfacts/ef603.asp

 

[quads]

I have never had it happen in any of my woodpiles, all of which are uncovered. The ants are gone and never seen again.

But, the difference may be that I split my wood out in the woods where the tree lays after I cut it? Possibly that gets rid of most, or all, of the ants before I haul it up and stack it? Might be that when you cut the wood, then haul the rounds up near the stack to split, many ants are still in the rounds and transported to the same area as your stacks, then set up residence there?

 

[PapaDave]

Good post Dennis.
The stacks in the field are never covered, and have been there since last summer. I've been moving those stacks into the woodshed, and have found a bunch of black ants in the stacks.
I'll resplit a piece or 2 to check moisture content, but these should be close to or under 20%. The ants aren't everywhere in the stacks, but they are definitely there.

 

[JoeyD]

I tore down an old shed this summer and in this shed was an old bag of 10-10-10 fertilizer that had a pretty large nest of big black ants inside. I was amazed they could live in that stuff. And yes it was dry as a bone. So I don't doubt they could live in a stack of wood. BTW do you stack on pallets?

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Dennis,

Are you sure you have a handle on what dry wood is? (Sorry I had to poke a little!)

Were the stacks set directly on the ground or off it like on pallets or blocks? I've never seen anything but spiders in my stacks. I was looking at some tarps and saw that I have a few mouse holes in them though. *grrr*



Matt

 

[madrone]

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think termites and ants both have a preference for damp wood but aren't always that picky in the end. When I took out the illegal and ridiculous "bedroom" in my basement, I found that those studs were essentially hollow. Luckily, that crappy lumber was more tempting than the old-growth timber the rest of the house is made of.

 

[Corey]

It is said over and over on this forum about ants leaving once the wood is dry. ...

Actually, I'd say it is quite the opposite - I don't recall ever seeing carpenter ants in live, living wood / cambrium of the tree. They always seem to be in the inner core / heartwood which is dead, or in the wood pile which is dry wood, or in structures which are dry. They do seem to hibernate or otherwise disperse when it is cold. If they are in the wood when it goes into the stove, I think that is just extra btu's.

 

[Tony H]

I wonder if alot of people just transfered the info for termites who really will only go after moist wood (They will die in a short time if they dry out) over to the ants. I do see more ants around our place because not only is it very wooded the ground is very sandy and they seem to love it.
I put bug be gone or similar stuff around the house 3 or 4 times a year and it seems to keep them out of the house pretty good.

 

[oldspark]

I went to the Minn. extension site and they talked about the ants liking high moisture conditions, I assummed this was correct.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Dennis,

Are you sure you have a handle on what dry wood is? (Sorry I had to poke a little!)

Were the stacks set directly on the ground or off it like on pallets or blocks? I've never seen anything but spiders in my stacks. I was looking at some tarps and saw that I have a few mouse holes in them though. *grrr*



Matt

Matt, some of that wood was stacked directly on the ground and some was stacked on poles. We found the ants in the rows that were stacked on the poles! Where the wood was stacked directly on the ground, we did not find any rotten wood either! But that wood was stacked on a high spot and the ground is yellow sand. Amazingly, the wood had only sunk into the sand about 1" maximum and all was good.

 

[Cowboy Billy]

Unfortunately I haven't had enough wood ahead to see how the ants react to it. But when I am splitting ant filled wood I though it off to the side and let the mice eat the ants before I put them in the pile.

Billy

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Billy, our mice are too dumb to eat ants. They much prefer to search a way to get into the house. Therefore, we feed them peanut butter....placed on traps. Then we have to kill the ants ourselves.

 

[Slow1]

Billy, our mice are too dumb to eat ants. They much prefer to search a way to get into the house. Therefore, we feed them peanut butter....placed on traps. Then we have to kill the ants ourselves.

Perhaps if you put the peanut butter on the ants?

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Thanks Slow, that is one I had not considered. I'll get the wife busy on that task right away.

 

[pyper]

I was in the hardware store Saturday and I found a product by Bayer that is listed for woodpiles.

You spray the ground with it before you pile the wood and it prevents ants and termites from getting into it.

You can spray the wood itself too, but you might not want to burn that. It breaks down over time, so maybe it would be OK if you are still going to leave the wood out for a long time.

 

[Flatbedford]

I figure that the ants are dead or dormant by the time the wood is close to the house, and that they should burn just fine, so I don't worry. I prefer that they are in the woodpile and not the house.

 

[snowtime]

We got serious about fire prevention about 30 years ago. One of the things we did was to remove all possible kindling within 200' of the house and outbuildings. We cleaned things up so good that we noticed there were less ants around also less mice. So we rarely ever see any ants near the house or wood piles. I guess they need some cover for the cold winters. I do know that old rotting wood is a sure ant attractor. Its not perfect but really helps. We are lucky in that we have no termites up here.

 

[pyper]

I figure that the ants are dead or dormant by the time the wood is close to the house, and that they should burn just fine, so I don't worry. I prefer that they are in the woodpile and not the house.

It might depend on how long you plan on having it before you burn it. Around here, the ants will eat too many BTU too quickly for any wood that I'm going to store for more than a season. Also, by giving them good habitat it increases the odds that they'll be more of a problem down the road.

 

[billb3]

I've watched carpenter ants go 75 feet away from the oak tree nest they were in through a little highway in the turf to the next large oak tree and then up the tree to farm the little aphids for sustenance.
I've also watched the little red and black ants that have nests in the ground get water / sugar sustenance from these weird little growths on twigs on oak trees around the yard.

I've also watched a hundred/thousand little tiny ants carrying off tiny bits of cellulose insulation from my house.
That had to stop.

 

[Lucky Phil]

I've found a good mouse trap on another forum. A 5 gallon pail with a few inches of salt water in the bottom, a threaded rod across the top with a soda can smeared with peanut butter, and a board for the mice to climb. They jump from the board to the can to get the PB, and the can spins and they fall into the water and drown. Some people use antifreeze, but I have cats, so I use salt water so it doesn't freeze in the winter. I've caught them in the shop and storage shed.