In Brief
This is a general guide to termites. It is aimed at helping people with pest issues, as an introduction for students of the beasts and a resource for the just plain curious (like me and possibly, you).
What's here
You'll find a jumble of information built mostly from all my email answers to people around the world. You can learn lots about termites, what they are and what they do, about avoiding termite problems, how to get rid of termites if you have them and how not to get rid of termites.
Now
In my part of Southern Australia (yes, I probably live on a different continent to you) it's early Summer and my termites are working hard. In the Northern Hemisphere activity is generally slowing. Now that our drought's broken, the termites love not being short of water and are putting a lot of effort into exploring for new food sources. This is a bumper year for termites. Floods and rains can also damage or bury termite barriers, making it easier for termites to get in. If you have any concerns, right now is a good time to have your home professionally inspected. If you are super-confident, infallible (& rich enough to bet-the-whole-house), then do your own inspections.
Where's Wally Don?
Lots of looking at bad situations, finishing off my marking for NMIT, Pro bono work on a Code of Practice for timber pest inspection (almost done) and the beginning of a long-awaited revision of the Australian Termite Standards is full steam ahead. Basically, lots of various tasks for various people see me moving around a little too much (see right, a happy mound of grass-eaters somewhere in the oddly-green NT). Despite that, emailed questions should get an answer within 3 days.
As usual, the aim is to make these pages a lot better, but things get in the way. And yes, there are pest termites in my yard. Three species. Two subterraneans and a dampwood (although the drought was very hard on the dampwoods and it will be some time before they recover). As long as they are not in the house, I have no problem with my garden termites. Haven't found any drywoods yet but there are some known in the area. Anyway, the project now is to re-wrie the baiting advice. Should keep it up to date. Meanwhile, here is a link to the old, original Bait Box Page from the mid 1990s (the ideas in which have apparently just been independently 'rediscovered' and termed a "research breakthrough" in Wisconsin)
Why?
Working at CSIRO, about 17 years back, I was spending far too much time answering telephone queries from the public (instead of getting my work done). So I started a dawn-of-the-web homepage which at first, couldn't be read by many people, and wasn't a lot of use but now it can and hopefully you can find what you need.
When I started this site, Alta Vista (the original search tool) indexed only 35 pages with the word "termite" in the whole of the then known web. Now Google knows well over a hundred thousand times that many. Unfortunately, lots of them are barely disguised business sites claiming to offer good advice but not delivering. Be very wary out there. Be especially wary of bad advice coming through social networking as some companies misuse it to promote their dubious services.
For the first few years these pages were at Labyrinth and a lot of old links still point there. Please let me know if you find any of those old links. The move to drdons.net means I have a lot more controlbut it has cost a lot on the Page ranking.
When this all began, back at CSIRO, each month only about a thousand people would drop by. Now the site averages thousands of hits per day. Keeping with my like of the outdated services, Webcounter; says that you are this Intro page's visitor number
I wish that 1.7 million people would also read my research papers!
Please feel free to drop me a note.
Syndicate
