Drywood Termite Identification and Treatment

Drywood Termite Control

Could I have drywood termites? It is possible, but not likely. Drywood termites are mostly a problem in the western and southwestern United States. In southern Virginia and northern North Carolina they are rare. When they do turn up here it is usually because they arrived inside something: a piece of furniture, a picture frame, a shipment of lumber, or a wooden item brought from a part of the country where they are common.

They live very differently from the subterranean termites we treat every day. Drywood termites need no contact with the soil and no outside source of moisture. They get the water they need from the wood itself. The whole colony lives inside a single piece of wood or a few connected pieces, with no mud tubes, no trails to the ground, and no obvious way in. Colonies are small, often a few hundred to a few thousand insects, and they grow slowly.

That changes what you would see. Subterranean termites pack their galleries with soil. Drywood termites keep theirs clean and smooth, and they push their waste out through small kick out holes in the wood. That waste is the sign to know. Drywood frass is made of hard, dry pellets, each about the size of a grain of sand, with six flattened sides and rounded ends. It collects in small piles below the kick out hole and can be mistaken for sawdust or coarse sand. Carpenter ant sawdust, by contrast, is fibrous and often has insect parts mixed in.

Other signs include swarmers indoors with no mud tubes anywhere, wood that sounds papery or hollow when tapped, and blistered surfaces where galleries run just under the finish. Because there is no soil connection, the damage is often in furniture, window and door frames, trim, or a single framing member rather than spread through the structure.

If we find drywood termites during an inspection, we identify the species first, because the treatment is different from soil treatment. There is no point trenching the soil around a colony that never touches it. Instead we treat the infested wood directly, and where a piece is small or badly damaged, replacing it is sometimes the cleaner answer. We then check the surrounding wood to confirm the colony has not spread to connected members.

Because drywood termites are uncommon here, most reports turn out to be something else, usually subterranean termites or carpenter ants. The frass is the quickest way to tell. Save a small sample and we will identify it during a free inspection.