South Carolina has two types of subterranean termites: the native species and the Formosan termite. The Formosan termite is an invasive species introduced to Charleston in the mid-1950s. Formosan termites are primarily on the coast but are making their way inland. While a mature native termite nest has hundreds of thousands of termites, a mature Formosan termite nest has millions of workers.
The Appearance Of Termites
Both types of termites have three classes of termites in the nest:
- Swarmers, which are dark brown or black, are about 3/8th to 1/4th inch long and have two identical pairs of wings that are translucent. Swarmers are male and female termites that go on a mating flight, find a partner, find a potential nest site, twist off their wings, and dig into the soil near a wood food source.
- Soldiers are pale yellow with an enlarged head and mandibles. They do not have wings but do have a thick thorax. Soldiers protect the colony.
- Workers are pale yellow with a thick thorax. Workers do most of the work in the colony, both by tending the nest and foraging for food.
In nature, termites are beneficial. They chew up and digest cellulose such as dead trees. Without them, the forest would be nothing but fallen trees all over. Termites stop being beneficial when they infest structures and eat the cellulose-containing wood. They are destructive and can, if not noticed soon enough, destroy a house by eating the wood holding it up. It is estimated that termites cost home and business owners over $5 billion each year in the United States alone.
Finding Termites In Your House
Termites are so destructive because they are hard to notice. They chew inside wood, leaving a thin sheath of wood between them and the outside. You can only find them if you know where to look. This is one reason why it is good to have an annual termite inspection by a professional pest control technician.
Signs You Have Termites
There are signs you have termites in your Aiken home if you look closely enough. Some of these are:
- Seeing swarmers inside the house: Finding discarded wings on windowsills and at the base of doors
- Mud tubes from the soil to the house: These protect the termites as they invade your house.
- Dark areas or blisters in wood flooring
- Hearing a hollow sound when you tap the wood with a screwdriver: Having a screwdriver or another tool penetrate the thin shell of wood outside a colony
- Frass, or termite poo, in your house
You Need Help With Termites
If you see signs of termites, you need to contact a professional pest control company. Although you can find products that claim they will kill termites, this is not a do-it-yourself situation. Aiken Pest Control can get rid of your termites. We use the Sentricon® System with Always Active technology to eliminate them.
When you call Aiken Pest Control, we send a technician to your home. Our technician will do a termite inspection. He then puts out Sentricon® filled green plastic stakes in the ground around your home. Termites really like this bait, and they eat it and take it back to the colony. When they regurgitate some of it and feed it to the rest of the colony, it keeps the workers from molting their old skins and kills them. Since workers are the ones who feed the nest, when they are all gone, the nest starves.
The technician comes out as necessary to monitor the bait and refill it if it gets low. This protects against future colonies. Annually, the technician will come out and inspect the home and maintain the baits.
Get rid of your termites before they eat you out of your house and home.