Termites don`t play fair...
...neither should you!
June 2010 / Vol.7 / Issue 6
Hello and Welcome to the June Greenpest News. Each month we aim to provide you with some useful information, keeping it short sweet and pertinent.
Sadly, this will be our last newsletter for the time being. Two reasons:
- We have covered enough pest control topics in more than enough ways to fill a book. If you can't find an answer to your question in our newsletter file we'd be surprised. However feel free to write to us if you have a question that needs answering. We'll answer you personally.
- Spam filters have killed the email market. Out of 14,000 email address that we have collected in the past 6 years from our clients only 1,500 manage to get through when we email our newsletter.
Contents
1. Pest Talk - Ochetellus glaber.
2. Physical Termite Barriers.
3. Bindii Alert.
4. Back Issues.
Pest Talk
This month I would like to thank John Fleming our Termite Manager for his major contribution to the articles in this newsletter.
No, that’s not swearing; that’s just the name of this month’s subject. Ochetellus glaber is more commonly known around the house as the small black ant. The reproductive caste has both male and female which are winged and that makes it easy for them to fly into your house on those hot balmy days of spring and summer. Sometimes you might find thousands of these little flying ants swarming around your home. Fortunately, most of the mated pairs in the swarm don’t manage to survive. By the time the swarming is over, most of them have been eaten by predators such as lizards, birds and predatory insects including other ant species. Unfortunately for us, some of them do survive to become one of the most persistent and annoying pests of homes that we encounter.
Why are they so persistent? The answer is that once they become established and develop a thriving colony, there are so many of them and if you kill a few that are on the counter, there are hundreds more to replace them.
The second reason they are hard to control is that they are experts at finding nesting places in our homes that are all too often difficult to access. When they are nesting in the house they can sometimes be detected by the mess of black dirt (actually dumped waste) which can be easily spotted on floors or window sills.
Every crack, crevice or join found in the tongue and groove boards of the ceiling (often found in older homes) is a potential dumping point for all the dead ants and other detritus no longer needed in the nest. Yes that’s right, they dump their dead after first recycling the juicy insides for food. The bits of ‘dirt’ are actually numerous ant body parts that form their tough exoskeleton… the hard outer shell. To see this for yourself, simply take a closer look at the ‘dirt’ with a magnifying glass. While we are at this point, it is worthwhile mentioning that many people very often mistake this kind of ‘dirt’ for termites, or termite workings. The good news is that unlike termites, ants are not doing any major damage; they are mainly a nuisance.
Ants are really very tidy housekeepers dumping their trash as it occurs. Unfortunately for any homeowner with a light coloured carpet, the black discarded body parts appear as a grubby dark stain. In fact, one of the most annoying situations occurs when there is light coloured carpet or furniture below a cathedral ceiling. The ants are living in the insulation material/cavity between the roof sheeting and the ceiling. They have lots of warmth, moisture to drink from condensation, and food supplied by other insects dying on the roof or in the roof void. In this situation they are very hard to eliminate since normal surface spraying can’t reach them.
It’s well known that ants will make long trails from their nest to reach food sources throughout the house. They will get into cupboards in the kitchen looking for their favourite sweet foods or in other rooms they will also feed on plants and dead insects. Unfortunately, using fly spray or surface spray doesn’t have any direct effect on the nest. It will only kill off a few hundred workers while the queen (most times multiple queens) are safe and secure laying hundreds of eggs a day to replace the lost workers. The ants usually don’t have just one big nest either; the nest can be spread right around the house in wall voids, roof voids, hollow doors, and hollow aluminium fly screens. If you have a tongue and groove walls and ceilings, many of those tongue and grooves can also harbour a part of the nest.
So, how do you control these pesky little creatures? If you are not beating the problem yourself with surface spray or ant baits commonly found in supermarkets, then you might want to call your local professional. Fortunately, pest controllers now days have a much better armoury of ant control products at their disposal. We now have non-repellent insecticides for use outdoors that are undetectable to the ants and will have the same domino effect on them as they do with some of our termite treatments. We also have new ant baits with better attractants for use inside houses. Both of these solutions are designed to utilise the ant’s natural foraging behaviour to return the insecticide right back to the source of the problem… the queen ants. They are very effective and most times these new products will eliminate the infestation. Since the products are biodegradable and have a once off use, they do not leave a lasting footprint on our environment. That’s good, but at some time in the future those now vacated nest sites may become available for a fresh infestation and we start all over again. Unlucky for you the home owner perhaps, but lucky for us, or we wouldn’t have any ongoing work!
Getting back to those cathedral ceilings for a moment; even when the nest is dead, those nuisance bits of bodies can still keep dropping down out of the tongue and groove boards for ages because lots of dead ants and detritus will still be there. Every time there is strong wind or other forces that cause the house to shake and vibrate, some of the detritus will shake out and float down. The ants are dead but the annoyance is still there.
Since the banning of Organochlorines, (a persistent class of pesticides used until 1995) the housing industry has moved toward utilising more and more physical termite barriers. Most people remember the original physical barrier often seen on houses that were built on stumps or piers… the so called ‘Ant Caps’ which is a poor name since they were never meant to stop ants but were designed to reveal termites (aka white ants). The principle was simple. Termites eating their way up through a wooden stump cannot penetrate the galvanised iron ‘ant cap’, so they are forced to build mud shelter tubes to go around the (physical) barrier. Note that the ‘ant capping’ doesn’t prevent the termites from reaching your home, it simply makes them visible. And visible is very useful so long as someone actually takes the time a on a regular basis to check them. In many cases getting under a lowset house to check the stumps/ant capping is a difficult procedure and it gets forgotten. Our apathy works in favour of the termites.
If you have an older style home on stumps, either go around and check your stumps or call a professional pest control company to come and do it for you.
These days, many slab on ground houses have physical barriers installed, but are they any good?
Now think about your house, does it have a physical barrier installed? It might. If you don’t know, then take a look in your meter box. It should have a sticker detailing the pre-construction termite control installed during the construction of your home. It might say that physical barriers are installed to the penetrations, perimeter or both.
Now, the big question – CAN YOU SEE IT? Maybe you can… that’s great; but where? Around the outside, sticking out from the edge of the building? That’s excellent!
Okay, what about the other side of the wall? Yes, we mean the inside and we bet that you can’t see it there! Plainly there is carpet, tiles, skirting boards or some other type of flooring covering it over. What if termites come through on this side? How are you going to see them? The answer is; you can’t.
The manufactures/installers of these physical barriers will tell you that “it’s parged (glued/mortared) to the slab or sandwiched between the slab and the bottom plate. That’s good when it’s working properly, but we have seen the glue let go. On other occasions when the physical barrier was rolled or folded and installed by the termite barrier installer as per the manufactures directions, it was later cut out of the way by a chippie or a brickie because it was making it slightly more difficult for him to do his job. The problem arises because you can’t see where this has happened since it is all concealed.
We know of one poor family whose dream house had to have the whole bottom row of blocks removed so that the manufacturer/builder could replace the entire physical barrier. Their life was not only disrupted for the months of work it took to rectify the problem, but also the months of anxiety that preceded before someone eventually accepted liability for the fault.
We have also seen a plumber cut out a section of slab and put in a ‘plumbers mate’ because the pipe was in the wrong place, it destroyed the termite collar (a physical barrier) around the pipe. Did the plumber let the pest controller who installed the collar know? Of course NOT.
As far as the sandwich method is concerned, no one can as yet convince us that the concrete slab or the timber bottom plate is dead smooth and since termites only need about 1.5 – 2.0 mm gap to get through the potential for trouble is obvious.
We have seen the termites sacrifice some of their workers so that they could build up a mud lead across the treated surface. They did this to insulate themselves from the repellent termiticide within the plastic.
So… what is the answer? Panic? Definitely not! Physical barriers as well as chemical treated zones/barriers or termite baiting systems are just one part of what all home owners should be doing as part of an integrated termite management program. Yes, we know what we’re saying is costly, but so is the damage and repair bill you'll face should you be unlucky enough to get termites in your home which is for most people, their major lifetime investment.
It’s not practical to fully check or to reinstall most physical barriers on existing homes, but it is possible to keep any future damage to a minimum by having regular termite inspections (at least annually) and an effective termite baiting system around your home..
Bindii are getting ready to seed and if you have any of these nasty thorns in your lawn, NOW is the time to spray them BEFORE they go to seed. Their seeds are nasty sharp spikes that can ruin the fun for your children and pets playing on your lawn. For residents of SE QLD, if you don't have time to do it yourself, please call Green Pest Control on 1800 6 12345 to book your lawn in for a Bindii treatment. Prices range from $110 for a small area to $330 for a large house block. Acreage will require a special quote.
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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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Always... At your service,
Jerry Furnell
Green Pest Control & Green Termite Bait Systems.
Phone 1800 6 12345.
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