pest control...

[got wood?]

Just some musings as I sip my coffee this morning...I've never really payed much attention to pest control (ants mainly, thinking about termites), but this year I got a grapple that had some nasty insect infestation in it...at first I would just set aside the splits crawling with ants in their own pile and hope they vacate. After thinking about it for more than a few seconds, it occurred to me that perhaps I should take care of them once and for all so I don't find them in my wood pile or my house. So I grabbed one of those outdoor bait packets with 12 traps in them. Are these things even remotely capable of killing off the colony the grapple brought?

What do you folks do for ant control? And what about termites? I haven't seen any yet, but that don't mean they're not there.

 

[jqgs214]

The traps work ok, I had a bad colony for a little will in my sun porch. I put the traps down and the visual activity ceased. I did a window replacement soon after and the colony although decimated was still alive and kicking.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

For those logs that have ants in them. That is one more good reason to do the splitting during the winter or very early spring. Then when you come across these ants they will be dormant and easy to get rid of.

One winter I tried an experiment and it worked great. We had turkeys coming through our yard daily and when I split some ash that was loaded with ants, I went to the wife's bird seed. I then went to where the turkeys cross and started laying down a light trail of birdseed and didn't stop until I reached the spot where all the ants were. About two hours later, here came the turkeys and like reeling in a fish, they followed the trail...and ate all the ants too. The only problem I had was that for the next couple weeks they kept coming to the wood pile every day. It gets a bit messy then but I discouraged them and they quit coming. Was a nice way to rid us of those ants though.

 

[n6crv]

Not sure about Ants but Termites can't be transfered just by a piece of wood. Well I guess if you were very unlucky and got the queen they could. But the Termites in the Spring swarm and that is when they can get into your ground then house. They look like a flying Ant but the wings come off real easy. We had then about 10 years ago and gee they can eat! Did not know we had them untill we blew a breaker and went into the basement and things were hanging from the ceiling. It was their mud tubes that they travel in. Well anyway our house was build in about the 1860's and the floor joists are the whole trees. We also have one beam that is alittle over 12x12 oak. They ate parts of it like it was paper. The bug guy took a piece of the wood to show how much they can eat and I was told they can't be transfered that way. Here is a picture of part of the beam I had to replace.

 

[DiscoInferno]

Looks like they were working on that guy for a while.

The termite queen is way underground, so no worries about the workers in a split. But around here those buggers are everywhere; any house with wood on or near the ground will probably have a problem at some point. One word: Termidor. It claims to slowly poison the workers, so they live long enough to get back to the nest and spread it around. Seems to be working here, no sign since we had the perimeter treated.

 

[Gooserider]

Both termites and ants need reasonable thermal insulation, prefer low air ventilation, and require moisture. My observation is that once split they seem to vacate the premises, and putting the wood into the shed, off the ground and under cover causes it to dry, thus becoming undesirable real estate from a bug's eye view.

My observation is that I have lots of logs that leak ants when I split them, but there generally aren't any in the splits when I pick them up to put them in the shed a day or so later. I seldom find ants in the wood piles that are in the sheds themselves. It isn't a big problem otherwise, because most of our burning is done in the winter when most bugs have died off, and the rest have gone dormant. Any wood I bring in generally burns within 24-48 hours max, so the ones that come in with the wood don't have time to wake up and start exploring before they go into the stove - where they burn quite nicely.

Gooserider

 

[hardwood715]

where they burn quite nicely

Kinda like popping corn, or is that them spiders? You know -the big juicy ones?

 

[Bill]

My best advice is while your splitting, if you find an infested section of wood burn it in the fire pit. Usually a whole tree isn't infested just a local area. Carpenter ants don't hibernate, there are subterranean termites and dry wood termites, so look your wood over.

 

[begreen]

Out here we have busy colonies of thatcher ants. The clean up the forest floor and are exceptionally industrious. Here's a couple shots of them. The first is their home. That's a 12' Stanley tape on top, crawling with ants. There must be a million in this colony. The second is one of their highways. There are so many ants moving back and forth to the colony that they wear these paths right down to the ground. There are several radiating out from the colony. We have three colonies currently in our yard (that I know of). Busy ants, fortunately they're pretty harmless and do not go after the house or woodpile.

 

[myzamboni]

I split a piece of cherry on Saturday and it was full of termites. I put it split side up at the far end of the yard in full sun. Checked it on Sunday and it was covered with ants (they have cleared out all the termites). I'll check tonight to see if the ants have not vacated.