In Brief
This is a general guide to termites. It is aimed at helping people with pest issues, as a guide for students of the beasts and a resource for the just plain curious.
Why?
About 15 years back, at CSIRO, I hoped to reduce the time I spent answering telephone queries (instead of getting my work done). But a dawn-of-the-web homepage didn't reach many of them. Now it does.
What's here
You'll find a jumble of information built 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
If you have any concerns, right now is as good a time as any to have your home professionally inspected. If you are super-confident, infallible (& rich enough to bet-the-whole-house), then do your own inspections.
In my part of Southern Australia (yes, I probably live on a different continent to you) it's early Autumn (Fall) but and there's finally been some good rain.. The termites are celebrating their good fortune, putting a lot of effort into finding new food. It is time for me to inspect my own home.
Where's Wally Don?
Lot's of various tasks for various people see me moving around a bit. This time of year I'm often out of the office for a few days at a time. Emailed questions may well take five days for an answer. Especially while I'n in FNQ installing field trials
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 has been very hard on the dampwoods). As long as they are not in the house, I have no problem with them. Haven't found any drywoods yet but there are some 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
History
When I started this site, Alta Vista (the original search tool) indexed 35 pages that included the word "termite" in the whole of the known web. Now Google knows a hundred thousand times that count. Many of them are barely disguised business sites claiming to offer good advice. Be wary out there. Be especially wary of bad advice coming through social networking as a lot of reptile-brained sales people have moved in. For a while the pages were at labyrinth and a lot of links still point there but witht he move to drdons.net I have a lot more control and can choose my own CMS.
When it 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 the outdated fashions, Webcounter; says that you are visitor number to this page (not the whole site!).
I wish that a million and a half people would also read my research papers!
Please feel free to drop me a note.
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