Ants can be found in any season but they are most conspicuous in the spring when they are enlarging or excavating their nests or engaging in mating and dispersal flights. This weekend, as I was doing yard work, I noticed multiple colonies of particularly large reddish ants making their way in and out of holes at the base of oak trees and around old oak stumps. With a little research, I was able to identify them as ferruginous carpenter ants (Camponotus chromaiodes), also known as red carpenter ants due to their reddish mid-body and legs. Although worker classes vary in size, the major workers are quite large with an overall length of 6-13 mm. These ants also have a large jet-black head with large mandibles and multiple rows of long shiny gold hairs on their abdomens, which produce a striped appearance when they catch the sunlight. 

Ferruginous carpenter ants are common and native to most of the eastern United States (except for Florida and northern New England). They are often found in oak woodlands, where they excavates the dead centers of stumps or wood in various stages of decomposition to create their nests, with galleries typically extending into soil to support their large colonies, which can have thousands of workers. Ants in the genus Camponotus are collectively known as carpenter ants because many species nest in wood, including man-made structures. However, unlike termites, carpenter ants do not actually eat the wood; the rotting material is simply excavated and removed to make room for their nest. The Camponotus genus includes some of the largest and most common ants in the world, with more than 900 species worldwide. There are 50 species of carpenter ant within the United States, with 20 of them found east of the Mississippi River.