About swarming termites.

Well established termite nests send out thousands of ‘teenagers’ to set up new colonies in early summer.

These colonising flights can create groups of swarming termites and happen when the warm, humid conditions inside the nest are closely matched to the warmth and humidity of an early summer evening — often just after a thunderstorm.

The outside ambient conditions are then not a shock to their system . Because it also happens in the evening, there are less birds and ants around to attack them.

Teenage termites with wings in readiness for their colonising flight

You can learn a few things on nights with swarming termites. 

Get a torch and, if the lightning has stopped, you can wander around shining the beam up in trees and the high parts of the house and any posts to see if you can find where the hole is they are pouring out from. 

If the flight hole is in a tree, the nest is probably in the hollow pipe inside the tree. 

If they are coming from any other tall structure, the nest is probably in the soil within a 10 metre radius.

What swarming termites do. 

Young termites have immediate problems. 

Once they reach a horizontal surface such as the ground or a veranda, they shed their wings (all four are the same size), boy has to pair with girl and then they need food, moisture and shelter.

If they can burrow down into the soil under a piece of wood and then seal off their little cave away from ants and lizards, they have a good chance of survival.

However, many of the ‘caves’ will dry out as summer progresses, or, the bit of wood is too small and food runs out before they can find another source.

They are always foraging for back up food supply which is why they find their way into houses through their protecting ‘mud’ tunnels.

Most couples don't make it through the first hot dry summer even though they may have found some wood in moist soil before it dries out.

They cannot find suitable conditions inside your house or on the veranda to actually start their colony. There may be plenty of wood, but no constant moisture source so they dry out and die.

Well over 95% of couples will not survive the first year and it takes 3-5 years for a colony to become mature enough to make a significant attack on your property.

It’s the ones which survive that you need to find and kill before they find a way into your home, sheds and other wooden structures.

Here's how...

1) Monitors are used to intercept the scouts.

2) Place them in the soil through which termites are looking for new food sources .

3) When you see an attack is under way, you add bait to the monitor so it can be taken back to the nest wherever it is.

4) And, you need to inspect at least once a year, preferably twice just to ensure they haven’t bypassed the monitors.

Those four points say it all.

It is your plan to defend your property against subterranean termites — the ones that do 99% of the billion dollars of damage to Aussie homes each year.

It's not hard to do, not at all expensive and you can do it safely.

If they do survive, it's because they have dug deeper into the soil and found other food sources — It's what they do!