Termites can do serious damage to housing structure and furniture if they get into your house, purely by eating their way through any wood they come across. It is the worker termites that do the damage as they collect cellulose which they then digest and provide as food for the queen, king and soldiers of their colony. Understanding the behavior and structure of a termite colony can provide ways to prevent them invading your house, without resorting to chemical pest control.
There are two main types of termites, drywood termites and subterranean termites, which each behave in a different way. The drywood termites do more damage and are harder to prevent as they live inside the timbers of housing and furniture and eat the surrounding wood as and when they choose. Luckily drywood termites are much less common in the United States than subterranean termites; subterranean termites are susceptible to desiccation and tend to remain in damp places so only really pose a risk to damp timbers or those that come in direct contact with the damp ground.
Termites live in colonies, with a queen and king who are responsible for the production of young, soldiers who defend the nest and workers who do pretty much everything else. Worker termites are blind, sterile, wingless and very susceptible to drying out, but can tunnel a long way underground to find food to bring back to the soldiers and king and queen. Termites that have entered a building will not limit themselves just to eating wood; they may also damage material, carpets and paper.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
The best defense against termites is to stop them getting into your house in the first place. This means making sure there is no direct route from the damp soil outside into the wooden parts of the house. In order to do this you need to avoid contact between timber and the ground; there are termite proof material designed for this purpose. Make sure that the perimeter of the house does not have piles of soil of damp leaves up against it, and keep drainage in working order. You can also treat any timber used in building, or use species such as teak, white cypress or turpentine tree which are naturally repellent to termites. By removing routes into the house you can effectively stop a termite invasion from occurring in the first place.
Termites in the wild create amazing structures which have inspired architecture, sometime creating nests up to 9 meters high that are constructed in a certain orientation to aid thermoregulation. Termites have also been used to find water sources in the early 6th century, and eaten in many culture, particularly those based in Africa. Termites may have the potential to be hugely damaging, but they are also fascinating creature with complex social structures and amazing construction skills and with a little bit of planning and care we can live along side them without the need to exterminate them.
