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 (like me).
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 people. 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 Spring and my termites are moving very slowly (except those inside the lab). For the Northern Hemisphere it's still peak activity time (your mileage may differ).
Where's Wally Don?
Lot's of various tasks for various people see me moving around a bit (see right, rainy termite mound sculptures at Cairns airport). Emailed questions may well take 2 days for an answer.
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 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
History
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 a more than 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 these pages were at labyrinth and a lot of links still point there. Please let me know of any old links. The move to drdons.net I have a lot more control and can choose my own CMS.
When thist 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 this Intro page's visitor number
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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