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 is well into Autumn (Fall) and my termites are slowing down. In the Northern Hemisphere activity is picking up with many areas reporting flights. This is a bumper year for termites in houses as they go looking for comfort, moisture and food. 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, by all means, do your own inspecting.
Where's Wally Don?
Lots of looking at bad situations, teaching at NMIT is scheduled as two clusters of compressed day classes with a good gap between. Pro bono work on on a Code of Practice for timber pest inspection is now minimal and the long-awaited revision of the Australian Termite Standards is due to go for public comment next month. Doing some talks in May/June for Agserv's Pestcech 2013 and later in May beginning work with AEPMA on a Code of Practice for 'sheet' termite management systems. June will see me at the IRG-WP's 44th annual conference in Sweden.
Basically, I do various tasks for various people which sees me moving around a lot (see right, a happy mound of grass-eaters somewhere in the SW of the NT). Despite that, emailed questions should get an answer within 3 days. You can also find my occasional musing in Professional Pest Manager magazine. Had a nice chat on Sydney morning radio and for a while you can still catch most of it on their blog.
As usual, the aim is to make these pages a lot better, but things get in the way. Next update will look quite different and should display properly on any screen size. And yes, there are pest termites in my yard. Three species. Two subterraneans and a dampwood (although the wet winter of 2012 was very hard on the Nasutitermes 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 control but 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. I wish that 1.8 million people would also read my research papers!
Please feel free to drop me a note.