January 2006 / Vol.3 / Issue 1

Hello and Welcome to the January Greenpest News. Each month we aim to provide you with some useful information, keeping it short, sweet and pertinent.

Contents

1. Pest Talk
2. Customer Question of the Month.
3. Picture for Fun.
4. Quote of the month.
5. Monthly Special

Pest Talk

Choice magazine have done an article on termite treatments that is well worth a read.

You'll find the article here.

It contains some positive comments on Termite Bait Systems, however they mention that the baiting systems are more costly than the old fashioned method of pumping hundreds of litres of poison in the soil around your home. They are correct of course for some termite baiting systems, but in fact they are incorrect if they were to compare the overall price of a Green Termite Bait System with a traditional chemical barrier on the average Australian home.

You will find that the majority of tips and advice in the article have been covered many times in previous editions of the Greenpest News.

Read the article in full for yourself (you'll need to download a PDF file) and if it contains anything you are not sure of, send us a letter and we'll be only too glad to help.

Customer Question of the Month.

Dear Jerry,

I've read some of your previous newsletters and you have mentioned that termites can form a sub-nest in the wall. Would you please clarify what a sub-nest is and does it have a queen? How does it start?

Thank you, Pauline C. Wishart, QLD.

Hi Pauline,

That's a great question. It's a very important part of termite ecology and it's vitally important in understanding how termites can form a nest inside a person's home.

By definition a sub-nest is an additional nest formed independently, but in relationship with a main nest. It usually has it's own (neophytic) queen termite and she will lay eggs that hatch to form workers and soldier termites whose loyalty is to the sub-nest. Another way to picture it is that the main nest is like a large city that develops in a suitable area outside your home, and the sub-nest is like a village formed by the termites inside your home if conditions are available to support a nest. There is a highway underground between the main nest and the sub-nest and termites from both nests are feeding on your home. Incredibly, each worker termite knows which nest it's from and will return to the correct nest with its little load of food (chewed up timber) in its gut.

It's important to realise that not all termite species are capable of forming sub-nests, but we know that two of the most risky termite species that cause the most damage to houses in Australia do it. (Coptotermes ssp. and Schedorhinotermes ssp.)

In other words, termites can form a new nest in two very different ways.

• By sending out millions upon millions of alates once or twice a year on hot humid nights, November to March in Australia. Very few of these winged potential kings and queens ever survive, pair up and find a suitable food source. But some do. The attrition rate is extremely high. If they do survive and flourish they can form a new and independent main nest. For many years this was considered the only way that termites spread.

NOTE: Winged termites that inadvertently fly into your home have a negligible chance of survival.

• More recent scientific investigation has revealed the second method of termite expansion. It occurs when scouts from a main nest discover a rich food source with a reliable supply of moisture. If the new site is assessed (assessed by who???) as a suitable place to start a new nest, an outpost will be established and a new nest started. A neophytic queen is produced and a new colony begins.

The main nest may already have more than one queen termite. It has a main queen but if she can't lay eggs fast enough to supply demand as the colony expands, then she may allow the colony to develop neophytic queens to assist the her in egg production. A neophytic queen never had a need for wings, so she has undeveloped wing buds instead. She never had reason to fly from the nest and run the perilous gambit of exhaustion or predation from birds, spiders, ants, and a thousand other creatures that readily feed on termites. She never needed to start a nest from scratch. In fact she had it pretty easy. Her creation is on an 'as needs' basis.

It is thought that the main queen releases various pheromones that control much of the colony's activities including the balance between workers and soldiers as well as the precise work that each worker is destined to carry out such as nest building, scouting, food gathering, nursery care etc. One can only sit back in admiration of this highly complex but perfectly balanced society we call a termite colony.

Whilst the queen lives she normally suppresses the formation of neophytic queens unless one or two are required. Here's the clever part; should the main queen meet with an unexpected death, but the rest of the colony survives, then the workers can replace the old queen by producing a neophytic queen. They can do this because the old queen is no longer around to suppress new queen development. What an amazing survival back up system!

Just quickly, some of you reading this may have wondered how our baits work if killing the queen is our main objective. The answer is simple, once we kill the main queen the newly developing queens can not moult properly and mature, because the very same termiticide that put paid to the old queen will also transfer to and suppress or kill the developing new queens. This is because termites recycle just about everything, including each other through cannibalism. Once a non-detectible termiticide is introduced into the nest, in particular into the royal chamber, then the colony is doomed. It may happen quickly or it may take several months to peeter out, but one way or another it is doomed.

It is thought that some termite species may produce more nests by using sub-nest building, than by the annual release of thousands of winged alates. One species that may prefer expanding their activity this way is Schedorhinotermes intermedius. This is a common species throughout Australia and is responsible for a great deal of damage to homes.

Sub-nests usually form in the walls behind the wet areas of a home, such as a bathroom shower. Shower tiles and fittings quite often leak. Though it may only be slight, this leak can lead to a build up of moisture in the timber inside the walls which then becomes an attractant for termites. If a sub-nest is formed, it can survive and go on living strongly even when it is cut off from contact with the main nest.

If there is a sub-nest in your home and your pest controller does an external perimeter treatment to intercept and destroy the termites entering the home from the main nest, this treatment will likely fail because the sub-nest inside the house will probably not be affected by the treated zone. This is because the termites in the house have no reason to come into contact with it.

At Green Pest Control we believe in treating a home that has termites inside the house in a preset order. Firstly, where appropriate we apply a non-repellent transferable termiticide to the available active termites inside the home. This initial procedure is designed to kill the nest or nests both inside the home and outside. This is especially useful if the nest location is not able to be determined which is often the case. We then follow this up in 6-8 weeks and see if there is any further evidence of live termite activity. If there is, then additional treatments may be applied.

Alternatively the first step may be to directly treat a sub-nest in a wall (if one is located) and remove it shortly after the treatment is complete.

The second stage is often a simple case of treating the entry point that the termites used to find their way into the house in the first place. This point may be known or simply the best guess based on all the evidence available. This is truly where experience counts - knowing how and where to apply a termiticide so as to prevent the termites from returning to the home via the same entry point again in the future.

The third part of our treatment plan is usually aimed at prevention. We normally will suggest the most suitable way(s) to reduce the risk of termites re-entering home, so as to avoid a repeat problem in the future. Depending on the severity of the initial problem, this third part of the treatment plan may be either a Green Termite Bait System or a Full Perimeter Treated Zone. The full perimeter treated zone is usually recommended when the termites have multiple entry points into the home and would be in place of step 2.

A sub-nest in a wall can often be identified through several means:

• The plaster on the wall is swollen out of shape.
• The plaster is soft. If you push your thumb on it, it depresses easily and leaves a dint.
• Termite flight holes are spotted in the plaster.
• Mud forms and reforms in the shower recess.
• A visible nest forms on the outside of an internal wall.
• Tools such as a donger, moisture meter, listening device, Termatrac®, Infrared Camera, sniffer dog or sniffer bird identify a location.
• The wall doesn't sound hollow (where it should be) when it is thumped.
• There is a permanent musty smell. (Due to the dampness of the nest.)
• Mould keeps forming on wall in the same spot all the time.

There are probably a few other ways to identify a sub-nest that we've left out, but at least this gives you a few to go on with.

Here are some photos of sub-nests and related activity that might interest you:

This picture shows a classic Schedorhinotermes sub-nest above a bathroom door. These termites were located using a moisture meter. The owner was suspicious because mud kept forming in the shower floor of the bathroom above this lower level bathroom.

A leaky roof led to this mould and subsequent termite activity in this section of the house.

These are flight holes where alates (winged potential kings and queens) emerged from a sub-nest behind the wall in this bedroom. It was adjacent to a bathroom with a leaky shower on the other side.

Coptotermes sub-nest emerging through a wall into the bottom shelf of a bathroom cupboard.

Coptotermes sub-nest in roof, one of three discovered in this house at Studio Village - Oxenford, QLD - 2001. The other two nests were located in the front door jam at ground level and also in the spare bedroom wardrobe. Would you believe that this house was given the all clear during the pre-purchase report! The company that did the report has since been exposed on ACA in 2005.

There's a story here, so let's digress. The company that missed ALL the termite activity in this house was fully licenced both with the QLD health department and the QBSA. They were also fully insured, though no claim was ever made.

We had done an inspection on the house for the vendor BEFORE he put it on the market. It was only coincidental that we were called to this house for a cockroach treatment a month after it sold that we met the new owners (a naive young couple) and advised them of their problem. We couldn't believe our eyes when they produced a report that gave the home a clean bill of health. The report cost $150 and only took half an hour according to the young gentleman who watched it being carried out. Apparently only a Termatrac® was used for 10 minutes, then the rest of the time was spent filling out the report form. He was really pleased with the report and bragged about how he'd rung around to save money and finally found the cheapest! The young couple who bought this home ignored our pleas to take action to fix the problem and decided to buy gym equipment with their savings instead of addressing the termite problem.

We are constantly advised by government and current affairs shows on TV to ensure that the technician who checks your home for termites is fully licenced and insured etc, but it doesn't count diddly squat if he is incompetent or just a plain crook.

Tip 1: Our advice is to always be there when an inspection is done. Watch everything and ask questions. Make it clear up front that if you're not satisfied then you won't pay.

Tip 2: Don't even consider a pest report under $200. Stay away from the combo jobs also, getting your home treated for cockies and spiders with a termite report thrown in for under $200 is trash. You are not getting a great bargain but in fact you are being ripped off. You may feel that you are saving a few dollars, but in fact you are gambling with your house. The consequences of a poor termite report may be very costly.

Okay, that's enough on that subject for now. Hopefully you've learnt something new and have a better idea of what to look for.

Oh... you may be wondering what a 'sniffer bird' is? We'll tell you next month!

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Picture for Fun.

The following picture was sent in by Michael Dufty from Western Australia and it is reprinted here with permission.

This nest is a feature of the Pussycat Flats race track in the Northern Territory. Michael informs us that the guardrails are made from metal.

Michael also sent us this excellent close up of a coptotermes soldier.

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Quote of the month.

The Ghost Rat.

We got a call the other day about a 'ghost rat'. It must be a ghost because the conversation went like this:

Client: "You know the rat you killed at my place last month?"

Us: "Not by name, but we know what you mean."

Client: "Yeah well, he's back."

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The Greenpest News is Published by J & A Furnell Nominees P/L; Shop 23a Franklin Square, 60 Railway Street, Mudgeeraba, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. The opinions expressed in this newsletter are those of Jerry Furnell. The reader is encouraged to seek further information from appropriate government and statutory departments before taking any action based on this material alone.

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See you again next month.

Always... At your service,

Jerry Furnell
Green Pest Control & Green Termite Bait Systems.
Phone 1800 6 12345.

Copyright 2006 Green Termite Bait Systems & Green Pest Control. All rights reserved.

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