Carpenter ants prefer to make their colonies and nests in rotting wood, they like it to be very damp because it’s easy to drill through and provides them with a near limitless supply of water and even food. However, when a colony reaches maturity they produce winged worker ants of both genders. It is best to contact professional carpenter ant exterminator Hamilton in the Greater Toronto Area to declare your home ant-free as soon as possible!
The males and females fly off somewhere safe and away from predators (read: your house) and perform an apparently rather beautiful mating dance. When its finished the females are inseminated with eggs she must deposit quickly. The men just die, I mean like, is anyone surprised by that? They must find a crack in wood that is preferably much stronger than the rotting wood they lived in outside so she will usually find a crack in wood furniture or a crack in the wall. She will lay her eggs and seal herself in. Every time a female carpenter ant does this she becomes a queen of her own new colony. This is how most carpenter ants will get into furniture in the first place but the destruction will continue. The worker ants will shortly hatch and grow and begin to work for the queen drilling a colony and finding the queen food for her new workers. She will continue producing eggs and the workers will continue destroying your furniture until someone realizes its infested which can take a long time if you don’t know what to look for.
The best way to find out if they are in your furniture at all is to check for tiny holes and piles of very fine sawdust powder. This can tell you where the colony is and help you take care of them yourself with home remedies or hire a professional to take care of it with commercial grade insecticides.