The bases of the antennae are separated from the clypeal border by a distance of at least the antennal scape's maximum diameter.

[7][8] Carpenter ant species reside both outdoors and indoors in moist, decaying, or hollow wood, most commonly in forest environments.

They cut "galleries" into the wood grain to provide passageways to allow for movement between different sections of the nest.

Certain parts of a house, such as around and under windows, roof eaves, decks and porches, are more likely to be infested by carpenter ants because these areas are most vulnerable to moisture.

These systems often end at some food source – often aphid colonies, where the ants extract and feed on honeydew.

Common foods for them include insect parts, "honeydew" produced by aphids, and extrafloral nectar from plants.

When they discover a dead insect, workers surround it and extract its body fluids to be carried back to the nest.

Occasionally, the ants bring the chitinous head of the insect back to the nest, where they also extract its inner tissue.

[12] Instances of carpenter ants bleeding Chinese elm trees for the sap have been observed in northern Arizona.

More often, they develop a systemic way to visit the food source, with alternating trips by different individual ants or groups.

[15] Contrary to popular belief, carpenter ants do not actually eat wood, as they are unable to digest cellulose.

[17] All ants in this genus, and some related genera, possess an obligate bacterial endosymbiont called Blochmannia.

[18] This bacterium has a small genome, and retains genes to biosynthesize essential amino acids and other nutrients.

Wolbachia is associated with the nurse cells in the queen's ovaries in the species Camponotus textor, which results in the worker larva being infected.

As satellite nests do not have environmentally sensitive eggs, the ants can construct them in rather diverse locations that can actually be relatively dry.

These newly fertilized queens discard their wings and search for new areas to establish primary nests.

The queens build new nests and deposit around 20 eggs, nurturing them as they grow until worker ants emerge.

In order for an individual carpenter ant to be recognized as a nestmate, it must, as an adult, go through specific interactions with older members of the nest.

Carpenter ants perform altruistic actions toward their nestmates so that their shared genes are propagated more readily or more often.

Communal sharing of immune response capability is likely to play a large role in colonial maintenance during highly pathogenic periods.

[29] Polygyny often is associated with many social insect species, and usually is characterized by limited mating flights, small queen size, and other characteristics.

However, carpenter ants have "extensive" mating flights and relatively large queens, distinguishing them from polygynous species.

Carpenter ants are described as oligogynous because they have a number of fertile queens which are intolerant of each other and must therefore spread to different areas of the nest.

[30] In at least nine Southeast Asian species of the cylindricus complex, including Colobopsis saundersi, workers feature greatly enlarged mandibular glands that run the entire length of the ant's body.

Carpenter ants can be identified by the general presence of one upward protruding node, looking like a spike, at the "waist" attachment between the thorax and abdomen (petiole).

The liquids are applied in areas where foraging ants are likely to pick the material up and spread the poison to the colony upon returning.

In Australia, the Honeypot ant (Camponotus inflatus) is regularly eaten raw by Indigenous Australians.

[44] In North America, lumbermen during the early years in Maine would eat carpenter ants to prevent scurvy,[45] and in John Muir's publication, First Summer in the Sierra, Muir notes that the Northern Paiute people of California ate the tickling, acid gasters of the large jet-black carpenter ants.