Species Info General

Other common names include: Large Sugar Ant, Big Brown Ant

Despite their common name, Hawaiian Carpenter Ants are not native to the Islands.  This very large ant is usually inconspicuous – until, that is, they decide to move into your house.  They tend to be nocturnal: they are commonly seen running about on the ceiling or up and down the walls from dinner time to bed time.  When a colony reaches breeding stage, numbers of distressingly large winged queens and males will fly around you as you try to eat your supper.  Perkins (1913), wrote that this species “is to a large extent domestic, breeding in incredible numbers in the walls of the wooden houses in Honolulu.  In some of these (even in houses only a few years old) this Camponotus . . . is an intolerable nuisance.  Swarming takes place on dark still nights, when all forms of the ants issue from their nests, covering the floors, walls and tables and even entering the beds.  Though partial to houses, C. maculatus thrives well enough in the open, but only on the lowlands, or at low elevations in the mountains.”

This species in Hawaii has long been referred to as Camponotus variegatus.  Recent unpublished genetic work suggests that this ant’s true identity is actually Camponotus zonatus.