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Hello and welcome back. This is Ben with Ben’s Pest Control, llc. https://www.benspest.biz/ It’s time for another one of our Ben’s Pest Control podcasts. Now, today, I personally find our topic rather interesting. Of course, most people in the bug world probably wouldn’t really care, but, I found it kind of fascinating, and it just happened that, What caught my interest was that this, new species of termite which has not really been in our area in the Treasure Coast, has now been spotted as far north as Tampa Bay.
So that’s what we’re going talk about today. Today we’re going to talk about Asian termites. https://www.benspest.biz/termites/ Asian termites have been established in Florida for a little while now. But for those of us on the Treasure Coast, they haven’t really been a problem. Most of their area has been around Miami, Fort Lauderdale. As far down as to the keys.
There have been reports of them on the West coast, I believe, in areas like Port Charlotte. It may be Punta Gorda. It’s very hard to tell. They have a map that shows the areas where they’ve been recorded. And, the map isn’t exactly very clear, there has been a new story now confirming their presence in Tampa Bay.
As far as the Treasure Coast. They have been established in West Palm Beach and have been found that far north. It’s hard for me to say where the closest is. The map is again, not very clear. It doesn’t really show cities, but it shows little dots. And, based on the dots, I believe that there has been, a finding of them as far north as possibly Hope sound.
It may be Jupiter, but it is, the south end of Martin County, the north end of Palm Beach County. And now you may be asking yourself, well, what makes these termites more fascinating? Well, to me, there’s a bunch of different things that make them more fascinating than termites. We’ve dealt with in the past. For one, most termites, if you follow along with any of my other podcasts, most termites swarm between the months of April and October.
That is their season. It usually starts when the weather gets warm, and we especially see our first rainfall. Well, these termites are known to swarm, anytime from February through April is their swarm season. That is very early. Something that is common in our industry in the past. So that’s the first thing that makes them interesting.
The next thing that I find that I’ve discovered about them is that unlike our current termite species that we have that really like to attack what we would refer to as Deadwood. So, Deadwood is wood. That’s been tree has been cut. The wood has been brought in, it’s been processed. It might be your studs in the wall, it might be baseboards, it might be furring strips, but it’s wood that’s obviously no longer alive.
Well, these Asian termites it sounds like initially attacked Deadwood, but they love to attack the canopy of trees. What happens is they find a dead branch or a branch that’s broken. Maybe it was struck by lightning, maybe it was cut off. And there’s a hole and they get into that hole when they swarm, and they start a colony.
Well, once they get in there, they can attack the live wood of the tree. This becomes a real concern because as we move forward here, what we’re going to see is that for a lot of homeowners, if they have large trees in their property, they’re probably going to have to consider having those inspected, especially before hurricane season starts, because they’re talking about these termites will get into a dead spot.
They’ll start to eat the actual live part of the tree, and then they’ll contact the ground where they will then, have their colony both above ground and possibly below ground. And they will go back down to the ground while they continue to eat up the tree. So some of these extremely large trees, we’ve not had any concern with in the past now become potential big time hazards in a storm because their integrity can be challenged by these termites.
And so one of the things that they’re talking about is that the future people may need to consider, have somebody come out and literally inspect all the trees on their property to see if they have an infestation of these in the trees before hurricane season or before a storm, because if that tree is compromised, they could fall in any direction.
And that could be a huge, huge problem. So that’s another thing that I happen to find fascinating. Now, one of the things that it talks about that the most notorious at this point in time, subterranean species that I’m familiar with, the Formosan termite. Some people think there are these massive termites, but they just have these large colonies.
The Asian termites fall into that kind of, process where my understanding is they have extremely large colonies, and they can make aboveground nests. And then when they find their way to the ground, they can establish them. But because their colonies are so large, they damage much faster than the traditional eastern subterranean termites that were used to.
So now what happens is we’re talking about a situation where these termites can ravish a tree, and it might only be a couple of years, and the tree could be sustaining serious damage. And then what they say is, once they do take care of the tree and the tree is gone, now they move into the soil. And once they move into the soil, as aggressive as they are, they’re looking for the next possible food source.
From my understanding, and from what I’ve read, if your house is close by, that’s their next food source. They find a way in and they’re going to town now on your house. So they it talks about treating them, possibly when they’re still in the tree. I know one of the articles I read talked about possibly using a termite bait in the tree.
My assumption would is that the termite bait would be attached to the tree where there’s a mud tube in their activity, and the termites would be allowed to feed on the bait and take it back to the colony. Either way, this is a very different situation than what we’re used to. And I’ve done pest control for 29 years, so it’s going to be an interesting situation.
It would be interesting going forward. And hopefully people are prepared because it’s not, it’s not what we’re used to in the past as far as termites go. And people are going to have to be prepared and with their colony sizes as they spread it, it will just become more and more important to have your property inspected.
And this time, usually I say homes inspected, but this time I’m literally talking about you may have to have your property inspected any place where you have a large tree near your house that could be damaged. This is Ben with Ben’s pest Control, llc and I hope you enjoyed our episode today. If you are interested in one of our free 58 point inspections, please give us a call at (772) 878-1972 or check out our website at www.benspest.biz and I hope you have a bug free day.
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