It’s April, and the termites are lining up on the runway. Every year about this time, the big local termite colonies will send out swarmers to establish new outposts and find new houses to eat.
There are two rules of thumb on termite swarms: First, if you get swarmers in your house, it’s all but certain that termites have been eating your house for at least one year (more likely two or three). Second, you ought to be able to tell if you’ve been swarmed. Swarming termites are not subtle.
For you termite rookies, though, here’s the basic dope: Swarmers are not house-eaters; they’re colonists. They are black, and they look like ants, except that they’re about the same size all the way from head to butt, without the pinched-in waists that ants have. They have wings, which they leave all over the house, mostly in the windowsills. (That’s because the little devils have been underground, and they’re genetically programmed to fly toward the light.) Hundreds, if not thousands, of swarmers will wander around your house, get sluggish, and die. Just sweep or vacuum ’em up, and put ’em out in the regular trash. They can’t hurt you, even when they’re alive, so don’t be a baby about it.
House-eating termites (workers, not swarmers) are white, almost translucent. They live in the ground and build mud tunnels from the ground to your house. You probably won’t see the house-eating termites unless you go into your crawl space or basement and break up their mud tunnels (about as big around as a pencil), or probe into a piece of actively infested wood. Most regular homeowners don’t go under their houses, so termites stay hidden from all but the most determined professionals.
Oh, just for kicks, I always like to throw this in: It’s perfectly possible for termites to set up a colony in a foundation wall and then tunnel up in the spaces between the blocks or stones. If they do this, they could eat up a big chunk of your house, without you or anybody else ever seeing them. The first sign of trouble would be when your piano ka-bongs its way into the basement.
Now, I’ve told y’all before, and I’ll surely tell you again: There is no way to know for sure whether or not termites are eating your house. The ground in our part of the world is literally crawling with termites. A dog can’t bury a bone around here without tilling some termites up.
No matter what anybody tells you, there is no foolproof termite-detection system. Some exterminators have trained beagles to sniff out termites. Shoot, here in Nashville, I could put my own nose to the ground and say I smelled termites, and odds are I’d be right every time.
Whiz-bang exterminators have stethoscopes that, if they put them in just the right places, will let them hear termites chewing. But the termites apparently hear the termite guy’s heartbeat coming through the other end of the thing, and they just go to silent running until the guy goes away.
I personally own a $300 termite fart-sniffing device. (It’s sold as a combustible gas detector, but termites fart methane, so the machine does double duty.) Although it will reliably locate the source of a leak in gas plumbing, I have no faith in it as a termite locator.
Not only can you not reliably find termites, you can’t reliably keep them away from your house. A while back, somebody came up with a scheme to build houses on top of a certain type of beach sand, which termites could not penetrate. It looked like a good idea, but then the guy got in trouble for removing large quantities of sand from the beach. So much for that idea.
The latest “innovation” is baited termite traps, placed around the perimeter of the house. The idea is that the termites take the insecticide back to the colony, and all the termites die. In theory, this might have promise. But your termites could be all fat and happy eating your house (a virtually endless supply of chow), and they wouldn’t bother traveling to the traps.
Your only hope (and it’s far from foolproof): Get an honest professional exterminator to crawl under your house once a year and look for signs of termites. (Do not call HOUSE SENSE for this service. My company does not do bugs.) If the guy finds termites, pay him to kill them. Repeat as necessary. Simple as that.
Walter Jowers can be reached at Walter.Jowers@nashville.com.
