Carpenter ants are not only a danger to your wooden furniture and fittings, but they also leave behind frass.
Frass is a mixture of feces, wood shavings from all the tunneling they have been doing, dead insects, wood debris, and other excrements. It can often look like sawdust or wood shavings on the floor or like a layer of tightly compacted dust covering a surface (usually a wooden surface).
Infestation control professionals often look for frass to track down the carpenter ants’ main burrows and the satellite carpenter ant nests.
Here is what you need to know about frass to take timely action against carpenter ant infestation.
Carpenter Ant Frass vs. Termite Frass
Carpenter ants and termites both love wood. However, termites feed off the wood, while carpenter ants don’t eat wood.
See Carpenter Ants vs Termites: Which Is Worse?
Worker carpenter ants will eat through logs and decaying wood to create tunnels to set up their colony in the wood. They will attack window frames, door frames, countertops, logs, and any other kind of wooden surface. Their favorite target is damp wood, as the humid environment makes it an ideal place to lay their eggs.
Termite frass is actually termite droppings. These are more compact as they combine solid waste and liquid waste.
Carpenter ant frass differs in that it resembles sawdust-like debris. It is more loosely packed and looks similar to a sand mound that other insects would create as they tunnel into the ground to create their homes.
You can find carpenter ant frass in many areas of your home, but it isn’t always an indication of the carpenter ants’ burrow. Sometimes they will eat wood just to make a way to access resources.
No matter the reason, frass is still a sign of carpenter ant damage.
Frass Components
Termite droppings (or termite frass) will contain digested wood, fecal matter, sawdust, dust, and other dirt that might have been in the area while the termites were moving through.
Unlike carpenter ant infestations, termites will attack wood for food, and once they are done eating through it, they will move on to their next target. The damaged wood is no longer of any use to them.
Carpenter ants will attack a piece of wood to create a carpenter ant colony. They have powerful pincers that shred wood, but since they don’t eat the wood, their frass consists mainly of light-colored sawdust.
It can also contain bits of digested food as well as dead ants. Carpenter ants eat their nestmates while digging through the wood to create a colony, and some worker ants simply die during construction.
Identify Frass Type
To understand whether you have a carpenter ant problem or a termite problem, you need to examine the kind of frass they leave behind closely.
Black carpenter ants, red carpenter ants, and brown carpenter ants all leave behind the same kind of frass traces. This is the light-colored sawdust and the fine wood shavings you will see scattered on the floor or piled up in a small mound.
Termite frass mostly consists of termite droppings and is structured very differently than carpenter ant frass. Termite frass will be laid out like a sheet with a slightly uneven surface. It will have solid and liquid termite waste to make an almost clay-like substance.
A piece of damaged wood being attacked by termites will have this layer of frass on top of it. However, the structural damage can be quite deep. The termites will eat deep inside the wood and come to the surface to deposit the frass.
Location of Frass
Since carpenter ants and termites develop frass in different ways and for different reasons, the frass itself will also be found in different locations.
In the case of carpenter ants, the frass is usually found at the entrance of their colony or nest. The worker ants will bring the frass to the entrance as they dig deeper and make room inside the colony. If you have carpenter ants attacking a door or window, you will find the frass beneath damaged wood.
Termites will create the frass on the piece of wood that they are attacking. Termites, like carpenter ants, can attack all kinds of wood, and whatever they attack will get coated with frass in a matter of days. Even if they are attacking the underside of a roof, you can spot a layer of frass along roof lines.
Since it is so densely packed, it can easily be mounted upside down and withstand gravity. There can be significant damage underneath the layer of frass, but since it is completely concealed, you can only tell once you remove it.
Removing Frass
Insect droppings are generally not as much of a health hazard as droppings of larger animals like dogs and cats. However, they can still carry viruses and various bacteria, so it is best to have some protective gear when handling any frass.
Wear a pair of gloves to protect against direct contact with your skin and a face mask to protect you from inhaling any fine particles when dealing with frass.
A good strategy is to use a firm bristle brush to remove the frass from the surface and then to go in with a disinfectant to give the affected area a deep clean.
You can also use insecticide first to get all the insects out, but this is only recommended if you are outdoors. Otherwise, the insects will only disperse into other areas of your home.
If you have a nest inside your home, call a professional pest control service to help you with the damage since the insects can get into very hard-to-reach areas.
Conclusion
Understanding frass can make your life much easier when detecting ants and termites in your home.
Removing frass is not difficult, but before doing so, you should remember that it could lead to a large colony filled with thousands of insects. If you want to clear the frass, you can do that easily with a brush or a broom, but if you want to remove the insect colony itself, you should get in touch with a pest control expert to help you out.
Be extra cautious when dealing with insects inside the home, as they can easily spread to other areas.
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