Yesterday I had a opportunity to chew the fat with pest management specialist, Dovid Davis of Baltimore. Dovid and I had neverspoken about
termites, so I asked him tofill me in, and I was pleased that I did, because this was the most interesting interview I've ever had with him.
David informed me that we were mostly going to talk about the insect's subterranean life cycle. They live in the ground like earthworms, and live off of cellular and wood by-products such as paper. They have three identified life stages.larva, nymph, and adult. As a nymph, they closely resemble maggots, meaning small white worms maybe a fifth of an inch or even less in size. They live in colonies, and the core or center of their home is the queen. Her sole purpose is to create the workers, of which there may be thousands in one living unit. They are all her children, and while they work, she creates more babies. The worker-slaves, in turn, feed her, and they all eat together, below the surface.
Here Dovid told me an amazing fact about these tiny wood parasites, If they contact the open air they die within 20-30 seconds. Therefore, they musn't be exposed to the air. A moisture level of 15-18% will dry them out. Sounds a bit like man's need to live in enclosed bubbles on the moon.
Most of the slaves live their entire life within tunnels. When the queen wishes to enlarge her dominion, she breeds out a second type of progeny called a swarmer, which is a flying insect with an exoskeleton. This outside shell allows it to live above ground.
According to Dovid, the flying-breeders are generally seen in the middle of March and April. They're development is triggered by warm weather. There can be up to 5-10 thousand in one pack. They do not eat wood; their sole purpose is to fly around, find a mate, (they come in male and female.), and then locate a new underground home where they can form a new settlement. And all of this must take place in less than 20 hours, which is their average life span. And that, Dovid concluded, ends the description of this stage of the life cycle.
Now Dovid told me some more incredible facts about the underground insect surfs. Should they desire to expand their territory without using flying reproductives, they must create new underground passageways. To effect this they make use of a building paste made of soil and waste, and create hollow channels from one point to another. Now here's an astounding fact, when you go into someone's basement, and see convex mud tubes running up and down the walls, these are actually insect turnpikes, within which the slaves are traveling from the soil up to a wooden roof beam to eat, and back down again to the floor. Like vampires, they must return to the soil from which they came every 24 hours, or they will die. This activity goes on continually 24 hours a day seven days a week.
If you break a hole in one of these underground thoroughfares to examine it, the laborers will immediately begin to repair it or shut it down. After they have closed off the damaged segment, they will build another one, next to it, which reconnects the two ends of the severed roadway.
These toiling insects use these tunnels to go along cinderblock walls, up through the middle of the brick or even around it. They will travel as high as 10 feet in the air or more to eat the roof studs, enlarging the passage as they go.
Amazingly, these blind underground vassals can thrive for long periods of time. Laborers may survive for up to two years, and their queen can live for as long as 50 years. While we think of them as lowly creatures, their existence is not unlike the life man will have when we colonize planets in outer space and have to live in airtight shelters to survive.
Now Dovid got to the heart the conversation. Knowing the lifestyle, how does a pest specialist go about killing these wood eating marauders. To accomplish, Dovid told me, there are two phases. The pest specialist first has to prevent the bugs from entering the house from the outside soil, and then he has to kill the ones that have already penetrated the home.
While
extermination treatment varies, the most common technique is to go on the outside of the house and spray around the perimeter, this is stage one. Dovid creates a 6-8 inch deep trench and put a long rod into the soil so that it goes down to the footers, and injects with a termiticide. This will eradicate the invaders who are trying to enter the house. As they come in contact with the bug poison, it kills them. The technician treats internal walls by drilling into whatever substrate the wall is made of and injecting the substance into the holes.
According to Dovid, the efficacy of the treatment lasts for anywhere from 5-10 years if left undisturbed. However, if there is an interruption in the chemical barrier or if the pest control agent missed a single spot because of piping or a tree stump, if there is a gap of even one inch, these persistent attackers will find it and go through it. So when treating a typical household, a technician will have to use between 75 gallons and 125 gallons of insecticide for each application.
Now Dovid finished with one more amazing fact. The new generation of
termiticides are unique among pesticides. Whereas the old generation were chemicals that exuded a smell that drove the pests away, the new generation are attack viruses that specifically thrive on them. When the insect crawls through sprayed areas he picks up the germ and brings it back to the queen. It takes 2-3 three weeks to knock out an entire dwelling unit. And the nifty thing about it is that the tiny microbes doesn't attack humans.
Well, that wraps up another episode of "Day in the Life of Dovid Davis Pest Specialist," I'm Boruch Fishman, have a pest free day!
