The damage tells you. Carpenter ants tunnel smooth, clean galleries and push the shavings out, leaving small piles that look like sawdust. Termites eat the wood itself and leave galleries packed with mud and soil. The insects differ too: carpenter ants have a pinched waist and bent antennae, while termites are straight-sided with straight antennae. Your technician can tell you which you have, and it matters, because the treatments aren’t the same.

No, and that surprises people. They excavate it to make room for the nest and push the shavings out as they go, like a contractor hauling debris to the curb. That’s why you find sawdust rather than missing wood, and why the damage builds quietly over time.

Two reasons. Spraying the workers you see barely touches a colony living inside your walls. And carpenter ants eat too many different things for bait alone to do the job, which is why the approach that works on kitchen ants falls short here.

Carpenter ant colonies take several weeks to fully eliminate, because the treatment has to reach the workers you don’t see, the brood, and the queen. Activity can taper, pause, and pick back up before it finally stops. What you want is a downward trend, not an overnight silence.

Usually in two places, which is the frustrating part. The parent colony sits outdoors in a stump, a woodpile, or a dead limb, while a satellite colony settles into your walls. Sawdust piles, a faint rustle behind the drywall at night, and ants running the same route after dark are the trail your technician follows.

Fix the water first. Damp wood is what drew them, so a leaking gutter, a dripping pipe, or rotted trim will invite the next colony just as reliably. Move firewood away from the house, trim branches off the roofline, and let regular service keep a barrier between the yard and your walls.