"Will it chew through my house?" is the first question I hear from a first-time ant keeper or any ant keeper's parents when they look at carpenter ants.
 
A quick disclaimer: your house will be safe if it's not made from a crumbly and rotting foundation. There will only be ants if there's water leaking through.
 
Camponotus nearcticus is a timid species and the smaller carpenter ant among Canadian species. Camponotus nearcticus is the ant equivalent of a small elephant or a dwarf whale. Despite being a carpenter ant species, Camponotus nearcticus is fun-sized, with queens as small as 8mm, and workers as small as 3.5mm. However, with a smaller colony size, it's also far shyer and, being arboreal, is rarely seen by the people it often lives so close to.
 
Like other carpenter ants, it prefers low humidity from 30-50% and slightly higher temperature at 25-28 degrees Celsius, though it surprisingly is one of the slowest growers.