Chestnut carpenter ant
The chestnut carpenter ant is a big orange-red ant. It uses its large jaws to carve rooms and tunnels in rotting wood. In a colony there are workers, extra-big workers and a queen that is twice as long as a worker.
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Fun facts
Its queen is about 18 to 20 millimetres long.
It stops looking for food on the first cool days of autumn and rests until spring, even in warm Florida.
Its babies spin oval cocoons around themselves before they turn into ants.
On wedding flights in June and July, there are about ten males for every young queen.
Going from egg to grown-up ant takes about 35 to 60 days.
Most asked questions about Chestnut carpenter ant
?Do carpenter ants eat wood?
No. They carve their homes in rotting wood, but they cannot digest it.
Myth buster
Myth: Carpenter ants eat wood.
Truth: They do not. They carve their homes in rotting wood, but their bodies cannot digest it.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Camponotus castaneus
- Group
- Ants
- Family
- Formicidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Formicidae
- Lives on
- North America
- Also known as
- Red hazelnut carpenter ant
Where the facts come from
- Camponotus castaneus (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by xpda. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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