They are BIG trouble if you have BeeMax styrofoam hive top feeders as they will chew right into them to get at the syrup. Otherwise I doubt the bees would tolerate much honey-robbing if that's what the ants have in mind. Secondly, I have seen plenty of ants and eggs on inner covers which appear to not be causing anyone any harm, not even the woodenware. I thought carpenter ants were fairly easy to identify: those big black carpenter ant looking things.
I noticed a small hole chewed through one spot in my hive too, and I thought maybe some foreign bees were trying to get into the hive, but now I realize it was probably a road for the ants.

Actually field ants and carpenter ants look alike and it takes a bug dude and a magnifying glass (found one that would work for beer LOL) to tell em apart. I've done several cutouts from fallen trees where there were more carpenter ants than there were bees.
This is a carpenter ant colony on the top of a feeder board on a beehive at my cabin in a redwood forest, 94062.
However, this doesn't mean that you can't find carpenter ants in areas with no apparent moisture. I don't know which one works or if it was me continually removing the cover and dumping and stomping on the ants.


I have spent thousands of dollars repairing dry rot and carpenter ant problems in my cabin. But when I got chickens that roamed the property, the carpenter ant problem seemed to go away.
But that could well explain why we saw carpenter ants in the kitchen in the spring - high soggy time.

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