Carpenter ant queens are very hard to find. They start their life as a winged female worker, fluttering about in a mating dance with winged males. They breed with each other, the men die and the females lose their wings. This is the process the ants go through to produce a new queen and with it, an entirely new colony. Females that become queens tend to lock themselves away for a few weeks after breeding to allow their eggs to hatch and grow into workers.
It is best to contact a professional carpenter ant exterminator Kitchener in the Greater Toronto Area to declare your home ant-free as soon as possible!
She actually eats the muscle tissue that once held and functioned her wings as a means of survival for the long wait. Once they hatch they begin making the queen her colony, drilling through the area she shut herself up in, and making a nest in whatever wooden object that may be. As this new colony matures it will eventually produce more winged ants and more queens and with it more colonies. In a relatively short time, months, maybe years, you could have a full-on infestation on your hands that could damage your house so bad it reduces the value and may even be deemed unsafe to stay in. This takes a long time but if the infestation is left unchecked it is something that actually can happen.
If you want to find and identify a queen when it’s living in the nest then you are in for a rough time. Without very advanced technology you will essentially have to rip your house apart to find anything.
If you see carpenter ants flying around in a bunch and clinging to each other then you can be sure that they are mating and that all the females in the group are soon to be queens.