How To Spot Early Signs Of Termites On Your Frisco Property

It can be difficult to detect termites early. The signs are subtle. But you must spot these signs early if you want to protect your property from termite damage. Let's take a quick look at them.

Swarmers

Do you know what a swarmer is? It is a type of termite that is produced by a termite colony. The job of swarmers is to mate and establish new nests. Long before your home is damaged, you might see a swarmer. You might be in your yard and have one land on you by accident. If you do, you must recognize it.

Identification — Swarmers are black or reddish-orange insects with long white wings. These wings are stacked on top of each other, making the tips rounded rather than clefted, like other insects—particularly ants. The shape of a swarmer's wings is a stretched teardrop shape and they hang past the abdomen by quite a bit. The wings are also transparent so you should see the body of the swarmer underneath. The body is about  1/3 the length of the wings. Together, the body and the wings measure 3/8 of an inch in length.

If you see a large number of swarmers, it is not likely to be an early warning sign. Keep this in mind. Swarmers don't travel far and they are produced by a mature nest. When a large number of swarmers appear, even on the outside of your home, there is likely a mature nest nearby. It is also likely that the termites have had years to damage your home. We don't recommend waiting to see this sign.

Wings

If a few swarmer couples enter your yard, mate, and disappear into the ground, you might be able to tell. They shed their wings after mating. These wings can be found on the ground, but the best place to look for them is in spider webs. Spider webs act like little sticky traps. Check them for teardrop-shaped, white wings that are all the same size.

Mud Tubes

The most destructive termites in Frisco are subterranean termites. If your property is attacked by these termites, you may find mud tubes constructed on your foundation walls or other surfaces outside and inside your home. Subterranean termites create these tubes to protect themselves from the air's drying effects and hide from the light of the sun.

Identification — Mud tubes are made of soil and termite saliva. These tubes will be the color of the soil found around your home. They may be as thin as a pencil or very thick where many tubes are constructed in one area. Thin tubes may look like a river flowing up your walls, including branches and forks. You might even describe them as looking like veins.

Mud tubes don't always appear in visible locations. Subterranean termites are quite sneaky. If you want to be sure that your home doesn't have any of these mud structures on it, you'll have to get dirty. You'll need to look under decks and other exterior structures or in the crawl space under your home. When examining a crawl space, you may need to use a mirror and a flashlight to look down each concrete pier.

Frass

If drywood termites attack your Frisco home, they can be easier to detect. These insects push their hardened droppings out of tiny kickout holes. Since drywood termites attack hardwood, frass commonly appears on window or door frames.

Identification — The droppings of drywood termites may be multicolored or monocolored, depending on the species. The size of their droppings can be compared to the size of coffee grounds or pepper grounds.

Damage

Most of the damage subterranean termites do is on the interior of wood where you can't see it. This is why they cost U.S. property owners billions of dollars annually. The cost of drywood termites is in the hundreds of millions because they often cause damage to hardwood windows and door frames, which can be seen. Do a routine inspection of your frames and look for any changes. Also, inspect wood support beams if possible.

The Best Way To Detect Termites Early

At All-Safe Pest & Termite, we help Frisco property owners safeguard their properties from drywood and subterranean termites, but since subterranean termites are so sneaky, we offer the greatest help with this type of termite. Why? Because we make detection a breeze. Our certified termite control technicians install the Sentricon® System with Always Active™. This termite monitoring and colony elimination system provide access to clear evidence when termites try to feed on your home. If you'd like to learn more about this award-winning termite monitoring and control product, connect with us. We'd love to tell you about it.