TERMITES

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Termites are extremely important in nature. They recycle fallen trees and other materials back into the soil. Termites are needed in our environment, however, a termite cannot tell the difference between a log and a board in your home. Therefore, homeowners must understand termites and the current control methods available to them.

Termites are widely regarded as a damaging pest to have in your home or business. Termites (sometimes known as wood lice) can cause extensive damage to the structure of a building if they are not managed or controlled by qualified pest professionals. Termites eat wood nonstop and never get fat!

The trailer for a new horror film? No, but it is an apt description of the menace that termites can be when they take up residence in your home or business. With some local species having upwards of 2 million members in a single colony that never sleeps, termites cause lots of money in property damage each year. Another irritating fact: termite feeding and damage can progress undetected in exposed wood because often the outer surface is left intact while the inside is eaten away! Clearly, termites extermination is important. Education on prevention, plus a professional inspection every 2-3 years are the keys to protecting your property from termites. Without regular inspections, termite control will be more difficult and your home can be under attack by termite infestations undetected for years; hidden behind walls, floor coverings, insulation and other obstructions.

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Types of Termites

There are several different types of termites in the world. There are different sizes, shapes, and species out there and they all do things slightly different from the other. All of them love to eat wood, and they can all do damage to your home, but there are different ways to spot them, different places to look for them and different ways to treat them.

A Termacide Pest & Termites Control Technician knows the types of termites that your home and property might have. We use the latest methods to track them down and the latest methods to remove them and prevent their return. Our guaranteed service will stop a termite infestation and keep them away from your home.

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Subterranean Termite: Order Isoptera  

Appearance: Four "castes" of a termite colony:  Identification factors for subterranean termites are:

• Alates (swarmers): Dark-brown to black in color, about ¼ to ½ inch long with two pairs of wings that are very close to being equal in length.

• Workers: No wings, about ¼ inch or less in length and cream colored.

• Soldiers: No wings, large mandibles (jaws), termite colony defenders, are creamy-white in color, but their head is often brownish in color.

• Appearance of damaged wood: Since subterranean termites build their nests underground, damaged wood usually has an accumulation of soil or mud within the tunnels of the wood they are eating. Since subterranean termites only eat the softwood, damaged wood appears to be layered, the result of the workers not eating the hardwood portion. In addition, subterranean termites feed “with the grain” rather than across the grain, as do drywood termites.

• Location of the nest: As their group name suggests, the nest is usually found below ground. Nests may be found above ground, but only when sufficient moisture conditions are available to support the above-ground nest and the colony is old and well established.

Worker: approximately one-forth of an inch long, light colored, wingless; 
Soldier: elongated head with mandibles; 

Supplementary Reproductives: wingless or very short, non-functional wings; light colored;
Primary Reproductives: winged, and darker than other members; caste most often seen by homeowners.
 

Habits: Live in colonies underground, from which they build tunnels in search of food; able to reach food above the level of the ground by building mud tubes; dependent on moisture for survival.
 

Diet: Wood and other cellulose material.
 

Reproduction: Different rates of growth from egg stage to adult depend on individual species; one queen per colony, which can lay tens of thousands of eggs in her lifetime, but most eggs are laid by supplementary reproductives in an established colony.
 

Other Information: Cause more damage to homes in U.S. than storms and fire combined; colonies can contain up to 1,000,000 members. as you can tell from the name, these termites live underground. They have to keep damp to live and they build mud tunnels to travel from place to place in order to stay damp and to stay protected. They prefer to eat soft woods. If you find damaged wood on your home and the holes appear like a honeycomb, the likely culprit are subterranean termites. 

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Drywood Termite: Genera Kalotermes & Incisitermes

Appearance: Larger than subterranean termites, up to one-half inch long; no worker caste in the colony.

Since the worker termites in these groups more or less look the same, the appearance of the reproductive caste (alates) and soldiers is important. Wings: Alates, or swarmers, have two sets of wings. The front set of wings has a pattern of three or more heavy, well-pigmented veins in the outer part of that front wing. Also, swarmers shed their wings very quickly after swarming, so most all dead swarmer bodies do not have attached wings. This is a good characteristic to distinguish drywood termite swarms from subterranean termite swarms since subterranean swarmers will consist of dead swarmers with and without attached wings. Swarmers can be up to 12 mm long. Body: Drywood termite soldiers have large mandibles (mouthparts) with teeth and their pronotum is as wide, or wider, than the head. Also, most drywood termite soldiers and workers are larger than the soldiers and workers in subterranean termite colonies.

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Habits: Create colonies in wood, with no connection to the ground necessary; often found in attic wood; need very little moisture.

Diet: Wood and occasionally other cellulose material.

Reproduction: Nymphs pass through seven instars before reaching adulthood; sexual forms eventually swarm to form new colony.

Other Information: Cause serious damage to structures, often long before they are discovered; piles of sawdust-like pellets are a distinct sign of infestation; not as widespread as subterranean termite; colonies may contain up to 2,700 members. unlike their cousins, the subterranean termites, these do not need to be near the soil, do not have to create mud tunnels to stay damp and prefer dry wood. The wood devoured by these insects will appear smooth and you are more likely to find them dining on the support beams of your house, as well as in furniture or even in your expensive hardwood floors. 

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Amazing Facts About Termites

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Termites are amazing creatures. Sure, they also destroy wood and wooden structures, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t amazing. If you find that your home or commercial building has a termite infestation, the first thing you should do is contact a professional exterminator to get rid of it and prevent it from happening again. 

In order to understand how to deal with termites, it pays to know some of the things that termites can do. So, here are some amazing facts about the little critters known as termites:

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Termites Never Stop

You may think that you have a big appetite, but termites have you beat by many miles. Termites do not sleep. That means that they work 24 hours a day and every single day of the year. They are eating, attending to the queen or working on the termite nest. That’s why termites can eat such a massive amount of wood, do so much damage to wooden structures, and can have colonies that grow to such massive numbers.

 

The Queen Keeps Laying Eggs

The life of a termite queen is actually not a particularly pleasant one. Shortly after birth, a queen meets up with males and mates. An entire colony is then built around that queen – who never again sees the light of day. The queen is attended by hundreds of workers that feed her and care for her and her entire job becomes laying eggs. The queen’s body will distend until she can no longer walk. Queens can become as big as 5 inches in length – most of that is devoted to producing and laying eggs. At some point a queen can begin laying as much as 30,000 eggs a day.

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Termites Eat A Lot

Termites can eat and eat and eat and never gain a pound. There are various species of termites around the world, including Formosan termites who have been observed eating up to 1,000 lbs of wood over the course of a year. They could devour up to a football field worth of wood, too. Plus, termite workers can seek out food up to 250 feet away from where their colony was initially based.

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Termites for Fuel?

Termites digest wood using bacteria in their gut. They are actually looking for cellulose, a component of wood, not the wood itself. The bacteria in their digestive system breaks down the cellulose and that can release hydrogen from the substances they are eating. Hydrogen can be used for fuel and there are some people who have monitored the larger termite mounds and discovered they produce enough energy that they could be used for fuel purposes. In fact, some scientists are studying termites as a potential renewable energy source or bioreactors.

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There are A Lot of Termites

If you were to somehow gather up all of the termites in the world and weigh them, the weight of all of them would be more than the weight of all the humans in the entire world. Some have estimated that there might be 1,000 pounds of termites for every single person.

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Termites Avoid Light

Some species of termites are born blind and spend their entire lives in the mud tubes they build up the sides of walls. They also dry out quickly in the light, so they prefer the moistness of the mud to the hot, dry sunlight. While not nocturnal, some termites become more active when the heat of the sun is gone and they don’t risk running into the light.

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