Despite the fact that termites are an incredibly destructive insect and can ruin a home over time, they are truly amazing. Of course, if you should find your home or business has been infested by termites, the first thing you should do is contact a professional extermination service to get rid of them and to ensure they don’t come back. In the meantime, the more you know about these amazing little creatures, the easier it becomes to understand how you should deal with them.
You think you have a big appetite? It’s nothing compared to the voracious appetite, they never sleep and spend 24 hours a day eating, taking care of the queen, and spend the rest of the time working on their nest. In the process, they consume massive amounts of the wood used to build your home so that they can build their own home and created massive colonies.
While you might think being waited on hand and foot might make the life of the queen a bit cushy. Not so, in fact shortly after birth, the queen begins to mate and a new colony is built. During her life, the queen will never be allowed to see the light of day as her entire life is spent doing nothing but producing more termites. Her body will become so big that she will no longer be able to walk and may become as big as 5-inches long, most of which is engaged in producing more eggs. A fully grown queen can produce as many as 30,000 eggs per day.
Unlike us, termites can eat virtually non-stop without ever gaining any weight. There are many different varieties of termite around the globe, the hungriest of which is the Formosan termite. This particular variety can eat up to 1,000 pounds of wood in a single year. Termites will wander up to 250 feet from their nest in search of their next meal.
Termites eat wood in their search for the cellulose contained in the wood, which is then broken down using bacteria contained within their digestive system. During this process, hydrogen is released. As we all know hydrogen can be used as fuel for a number of things. Experiments have been conducted using large termite mounds to see how much hydrogen they produce. Turns out that large termite mounds can produce enough hydrogen that it can be captured and used as a renewable source of energy.
According to scientists, if you were able to round up all of the termites in the world and weigh them, the result would be shocking. Scientists estimate that there might be as much as 1,000 pounds of termites for every human being on the planet. Let that sink in for a moment and then be sure to contact a pest control service and have your home inspected and treated for these voracious pests.
Worth noting is that termites are more active in warmer weather starting in spring, but they do not go completely dormant in the winter, so there is never a bad time to have your home inspected. Termite damage can drastically reduce the selling value of your home and may cost you a sale if not properly treated.
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