I agree that the t-foot is sticky enough to do a great job. If you don't have any at home now and want to promptly put up an available, non-messy barrier to ruin the carpenter ant's lunch plan, sticky masking tape can snag carpenter ants as they try to walk over it to check on their herd of aphids higher up the trunk. A couple of separated rings of 1" masking tape with the sticky side facing outward that are snuggly wrapped around a smooth bark area has proven here that various kinds of ants "can drop in any time you want, but you can never leave", to borrow the song lyrics. Just check each AM to see if any small lizards would be snagged and need to be gently set free. As the sticky glue begins to lose it's stickiness, just replace it with a fresh strip. Or when there are too many bugs on it.........It would be good to hose off the aphids thoroughly to "reboot" the tree before putting the strips.

Carpenter ants will not harm a live, healthy tree. They indicate there is something wrong with the tree- there was rot or something they were working on. My dad grew up as a lumber jack and they knew to look for trees that carpenter ants had/were working on; that meant they had punky spots and weren't good for logging. We have big nests of them in our back yard and have never had issues with them. They don't come in the house (though they did in the house i grew up in, in PA). The ones in our back yard make nests probably close to 4' wide, but they don't seem particularly aggressive, though i wouldn't stand in the middle of one, either. We just work around them and they move around some through the years. Incidentally, though we have fire ants up front where i've not seen the carpenters much or at all, we still don't have the fire ants in back where all the carpenters are. I'll take the carpenters any day of the week.

are you that good on ID??? ... are you sure they are carpenter ants???? the only thing ants trigger in my mind.. when i see too many on any given plant.. of any type is.. aphids.. they farm the aphids.. and milk them of honeydew .. as disgusting as thought is.. lol ... otherwise they are being advantageous regarding other pre-existing problems.. in other words.. they did not cause the dead wood ... they are harvesting it.. if in fact that is what they are doing ... otherwise.. i ignore them ... though it is rather exhilarating.. to have a bunch climbing thru the hairs on your body.. whether feet or hands.. lol ... ken

Last weekend we found some bugs in the house and I thought they were termites, but it turned out to be winged ants. We called ABC Pest and Lawn to come out to treat the area since we used them for our previous treatment and have a contract with them. They use Termidor. While I was still thinking they were termites, I went outside to look for a tube on the house and found one that ran right up beind where the gutter comes down on the side of our house. It was up about 3 feet! This was a different spot than the area we had treated last year. I checked the nearby termite station and fireants were in there, so termites were present there too since fireants like to eat termites. We had the guy come out from ABC Pest and Lawn and he checked the tube but could not find a spot where they were actually getting into the house - THANK GOODNESS! He also found one of the ants and confirmed it was an ant and not termites. So, they will be back out to treat that area for termites when it dries up (it had rained yesterday morning so it was too wet) next week and I will put bait out for the ants. I had also found where some ants were getting into the weep holes between the bricks on the other side of our house and he suggested that along with the bait that I also use an aspirator (one of those bulb/snot suckers we used for our babies) to suck up some DE and shoot it into each of the weep holes and do a lot of it into the one where the ants are getting into the house. Then he suggested using steel or copper wool to stuff into those holes to discourage the ants from getting in again. It will still allow the house to "breathe", but keeps bugs out.