Carpenter Ants in Georgia
By Mark Sargent, President of High Priority Pest Services · Updated October 7, 2026
Carpenter ants do not eat wood. They excavate it, hollowing out galleries to nest in, and the wood they choose is almost always wood that something else has already ruined. That is the single most useful thing to know about them: a carpenter ant problem inside a Georgia home is usually a moisture problem that has been running quietly for a while, and treating the ants without finding the water leaves you doing it again next year.
Telling Carpenter Ants from Termites
Both swarm in spring, both produce winged reproductives, and both turn up in the same damp places, which is why they get confused constantly. The differences are easy once you know where to look.
- Waist. Carpenter ants have a pinched, obviously narrow waist. Termites are straight-sided from front to back.
- Antennae. Ant antennae are elbowed, with a clear bend. Termite antennae are straight and look beaded.
- Wings. A carpenter ant swarmer has two pairs of unequal length, the front pair longer. A termite swarmer has four wings of equal length that shed easily — a pile of identical wings on a windowsill points to termites.
- What they leave behind. Carpenter ants push out coarse frass that looks like pencil shavings mixed with insect parts. Subterranean termites build mud tubes instead, and leave the wood surface intact.
If what you are finding is mud tubes or hollow-sounding wood with no sawdust, you are likely looking at termites, and that is a different job — see termite protection with Sentricon.
Where They Nest on Georgia Properties
The black carpenter ant is the one most people encounter here. Colonies work on a parent-and-satellite system: the main nest is usually outdoors in a stump, a dead limb, a woodpile or a landscape timber, and satellite nests get established inside the structure. That split matters, because killing the trail of ants crossing your kitchen counter does nothing to the colony producing them.
The reliable entry points on Georgia homes are the wet ones. Deck ledger boards where flashing has failed. Window and door frames under a leaking gutter or a downspout that dumps against the wall. Crawlspace joists over standing water. Bath and kitchen subfloor around a slow supply-line leak. On lake property, add anything within reach of constant humidity — boathouse framing, dock structure, and the shaded north side of a house that never fully dries out.
Tree limbs touching the roof are the other standard route in. Carpenter ants forage well up into trees, and a branch resting on the eave is a bridge.
Season and What You Will Notice First
Activity picks up as things warm in spring and runs through the humid part of the year. Swarmers indoors in spring are the clearest signal, and they mean a mature colony — carpenter ant colonies generally take several years before they produce reproductives at all, so swarmers inside are not a new problem.
Short of that, people notice large black ants indoors at night, faint rustling in a wall or ceiling void when the house is quiet, or small piles of that pencil-shaving frass under a window frame or along a baseboard. The frass will often reappear a day after you sweep it up, which is a useful test.
What Actually Works, and What Does Not
Spraying visible trails with a repellent product is the common mistake. It kills the foragers you can see, which feels like progress, and in some cases it splits the colony into additional satellite nests — a phenomenon called budding — leaving you worse off than before. Foragers are a symptom.
What works is locating the nests, treating them directly, using non-repellent products and baits that get carried back rather than killing on contact, and correcting the moisture that made the wood attractive in the first place. That last part is not pest control work, but we will tell you where the water is coming from, because without it the treatment is temporary.
What We Do About Them
Carpenter ants are covered under the Priority Pest Management Plan, which handles recurring general pest control on a schedule so an ant problem gets caught before it is a structural one. For an active infestation we inspect the structure and the ground around it, identify parent and satellite nests, and treat accordingly. If there is wood-destroying damage, we will say so plainly and tell you whether termites are also involved.
We are licensed by the Georgia Department of Agriculture and have been family-owned and operated since 2014, working across the Lake Country, the I-20 corridor toward Augusta, the Athens area and the eastern side of metro Atlanta.
Think You Have Carpenter Ants?
Call or text High Priority Pest Services at (470) 474-2847. Tell us what you are seeing and where, and we will tell you what is likely driving it. Service is available within 24 hours, and our work is backed by the High Priority Promise: if pests return between scheduled visits, so do we, at no extra charge.
Schedule Pest Service
Tell us what you’re seeing and we’ll get back to you within 24 hours. Office hours are Mon–Sun, 8AM–6PM — and we’re available 24/7 for urgent problems, so call (470) 474-2847 if it can’t wait.
Where we treat this
High Priority treats this pest across the Lake Country, including Eatonton, Lake Oconee, Greensboro, Madison and Milledgeville. See all areas we serve, our current prices and the Georgia pest calendar.