Bugs in my cedar... ants or termites?

[DPForumDog]

We cut down a few cedar trees about a month ago and milled them last weekend.   One of the trees had "bugs" mostly at the base. 
1. Are these termites or ants? 
2. Have they rendered the wood uselss?
3.  Do I need to sprinkle 7 dust or something like that around the mill?  and on the wood we milled?
4.  What are the detriments of having bugs in your wood?

Thanks
Granny DP

[sealark37]

Ants-No-"Amdro"-Some bugs eat wood.  You don't want to use bugs in construction.  Ants simply enter cedar looking for a home.   Regards, Clark

[DPForumDog]

So I can use the wood in construction if I treat it with Amdro?

[drobertson]

pine sol mix of blade lube kills them, I just laugh when folks say cedar is immune to insects, black ants thrive in the big old ones many times,

[beenthere]

Ants are only there to live in the soft wood created by decay. They don't go into or eat out solid wood. Just sayin...

Once the wood is opened up and dry, they will be out of there. If the wood remains wet and the decayed wood can't dry out, the ants may just stick around.

Ants, such as these big black ones, are really a good indicator that the wood is decaying and a great FYI signal.

I wouldn't suggest anything but letting the wood dry out and use it where it will stay dry.

[gfadvm]

All of our standing dead cherry and blackjack seem to have a few "pockets" of those big, black ants.  I just saw right through them, then stack and sticker the boards. I don't know where the ants go, but they disappear almost immediately and don't come back.  I have never pulled a board from a stack that had ants in it.

[Magicman]

I chased many thousands out of some doty center ERC yesterday and today.  As mentioned, they are not a threat to solid dry wood. 

I do not know that they will sting, but I can assure you that they can and will bite/pinch you.   :-\

[ncsawyer]

Those are black carpenter ants and they do bite.  I know from experience that if one crawls up the leg of your pants, it will persuade you to shamelessly drop your drawers to fish him out.  When I was a kid, I can remember watching a man run around our sawmill in his tighty whities trying to evacuate a particularly feisty one.

[Brucer]

Carpenter ants, mid-sized workers. You'll find different sizes in the same colony -- 1/4" to 3/4". Large winged ants are queens, and smaller winged ants are fertile males.

The queen establishes a primary colony in an area with high humidity (such as the decayed wood in ERC and WRC). The high humidity is essential for the queen, eggs, and newly hatched larvae.

The workers will also establish secondary colonies nearby, and will move the older larvae into them (usually at night, so you don't notice). The secondary colonies don't have a queen and can be much drier.

They don't eat wood, but will tunnel into it to establish their colonies. Small piles of sawdust below a 1/8" hole are a good sign that they are present. They prefer not to tunnel in solid, hard wood if they can help it. They will tunnel in softer wood, and also between two pieces of wood that aren't quite touching.

I had a secondary colony set up housekeeping in my attic, where I had a double truss. There was a small gap between the trusses where the nailer plates kept them apart and the ants thought this was just perfect. We found them because we could here this faint rasping sound in the kitchen ceiling, directly below the colony.

A week after the exterminator left, I checked the attic and found thousands of dead ants lying everywhere, and a huge mound of dead larvae. The exterminator said I'd probably find something like that -- the ants sense that they are being poisoned and carry all the larvae to a central point, in hopes that workers from the parent colony will come and ferry them away.

My neighbour had an infestation in his basement once, as well. Again, a secondary colony. The ants were tunneling in the 2x4 strapping in the Rec Room. My daughter used to play with his daughters and they had seen lines of ants marching across the concrete floor to and from the wall. It was just something interesting to them so they never thought to mention it.

When the neighbour had the builders come to do some renovations, they could literally crush the 2x4's with a squeeze of the hand.

So don't assume that just because some wood is dry, the ants won't tunnel there. They prefer to do things the easy way, but given no other choice, they'll tunnel into sound, dry wood.

And for the record, if it weren't for carpenter ants, our forests would be piled high with partly decayed fallen tree trunks.

[YellowHammer]

Carpenter ants, hate them when them come boiling out of cedar.  I quickly disconnect my sawdust blower suction hose from the mill, and run if over the mass of critters.  They get a quick one way ticket through the blower impeller and out of my way.  Sucks them right out of the cant and boards.  It's fun, too.   8)

[Magicman]

A couple of times yesterday the ERC cant was solid black with ants boiling out of the holes.  Now they are in and under everything where they can hide.  My outriggers are full of them.  :-\

[Brad_bb]

Though I have not had the need yet to use it on lumber/logs, I have used Dragnet on carpenter ants.  It's a synthetic chrysanthemum oil.  I think I had a nest in the front part of the farmhouse when I moved in about 10 years ago.  Occasionally I'd see scouts in the house.  One night I was awakened by a serious pinch on my back and I screamed.  Low and behold it was a carpenter ant scout biting me in my bed.  That's when I called the exterminator.  Then I found out what he was using and bought the Dragnet online and followed up with treatments and they're gone.  You can spray it in the house or around buildings.  Dries in minutes and not harmful to humans or pets.