Understand Termite Society for Termite Control

Smack! That's the sound of the termite lips as they feast on a delectable buffet of spruce, Douglas fir, pine, oak, or whatever your house may have to offer. Oh, you say you don't have termites in your home? Well, just wait.

Termites cause enormous damage to structures each year in the United States. Believe it or not, these varmints cause more damage to houses and buildings than the combined losses of all annual fires, storms, and earthquake damage. Would you like that in dollar figures? No problem, but be sure to sit down. Termites are responsible for $1,000,000,000 in damage every 12 months. Termites damage nearly two million houses a year. In this same period, only 400,000 house fires occur.

Run Silent, Run Deep

The novel/movie Run Silent, Run Deep would be a great motto for termites. At their best, they are virtually undetectable. They eat wood structural members from the inside out. Termites sense when they are near the surface of a piece of wood. They make the necessary adjustments to their stabilizing fins and yell: Dive, dive...!

Because they are so small, their munching and crunching can't be heard by human ears. As you might imagine, they use their size to their advantage. Termites can squeeze through a crack as small as 1/64th of an inch!

Termites build nests in the ground, as they love moist soil. The nests can be just below the surface or they can reside as much as twelve feet below the surface.

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Class Distinction

Termites live in very organized societies. Each grouping of termites is called a colony. These are similar to our cities. Each colony is ruled by a king and queen termite.

Within the colony are four other types of termites: workers, supplementary reproductives, soldiers, and reproductives.

The workers are the trouble makers. These guys are both sterile and blind. They are responsible for providing food for the entire colony. Some workers are delegated to stay in the nest and care for the queen, baby termites, and soldiers.

The supplementary reproductives have the easiest job. They merely hang out around the nest and do nothing. If either the king or queen dies or gets sick, they step in to make sure termite eggs are produced on a regular basis.

The soldiers are the termites that protect the colony. They develop armored heads with strong pincer jaws. Ants, you see, are a major enemy of termites.

The final group of termites are reproductives. I guess you would say that these are the princes and princesses of the termite society. At given points of time, these termites develop sexual organs and wings. Then one day they decide to take off. They swarm out of the nest, pair off, and fly to other sites to start new colonies.

What Termite Workers Do

As we just discussed, the worker termites are the ones we are concerned with. These are the only ones who leave the nest on a daily basis. They go out and hunt down various sources of food. A single colony of termites will fan out and rely on several sources of food.

For example, your house may be one food stop, the roots of a downed tree in your back yard could be another, your neighbor's wood pile, etc.

The termites build a well-developed underground roadway system between these food sources. Furthermore, the worker termites will visit each of the different food sites. They don't always go back to the same spot to eat.

This foraging for food takes place on a nonstop basis. The worker termites must constantly bring chewed up wood products back to the hungry colony. Each colony is like a miniature New York City, the city that never sleeps.

The weak link in the termite scheme of things is the worker termite. You see, this little devil must get back into the soil or into the nest (colony) every 24 hours or so. They simply get thirsty. By returning to the moist soil around their nest, they get filled back up with water and are ready to go out again.

This dependence upon water and the need to get back to the nest for water and to deliver food is how we can defend ourselves against this pest.

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