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once a year
Location: lafayette, CA 94549
October 26, 2010 11:40 pm
Hi Bugman,
Love this site,,, but couldn’t find anything quite like I’ve experienced for the past 2 years… I live in Lafayette California, just over the Berkeley Hills and after the October rains (last year and now) I had an infestation in the house of some bugs… Quite a few, and concentrated in various areas.
I can only think they’re termites based on all the research I’ve done but there’s no picture that look quite like these guys… They’re not pale…. they’re not RED,,,, They are about 6mm & dark dark brown. I find them in the sink, the carpet, the bathroom floor… etc… This year there are less than last, , , but the storm this year was more mild… (?!?)
And its not just what they LOOK like, but how they act… the pictures I have show a part of the situation – – they appear to travel in pairs and one puts its abdomen up in the air (attracting a mate?) then when they pair up it’s like a choo-choo train trip with one attached to the others back end! This morning I found (and captured) 4 in my sink, put them in a zip lock bag … and they just move around in there (for ~ 2 days, then die). No apparent ability to escape.
Last year I panicked and asked a termite guy to come out , , , he found no evidence of mud-tunnels or anything else, but still offered to do a multi thousand dollar preventative job. . .
Yikes, , , now that I zoom in on my pictures, I wonder if I should have taken him up on the deal… abdomen looks bigger than I thought (to me it looked flat!)…
Thanks for your help!
(but help fast??)
Signature: Alex

Termite Alate

Hi Alex,
Thanks for your compliments, but as we have stated numerous times in the past, we are artists, not scientists, and we have no background in entomology, nor do we endorse extermination, but there are always exceptions, and that would include a situation where an infestation of Termites is compromising the structure of a home.  You definitely have photographed a Termite, and we believe we have found a match on BugGuide that also shows the posture that you have also photographed and described.  The species is not identified.  The same person also submitted an image of a winged Termite Alate, and there is a robust dialog regarding the image posted to BugGuide and the possibility that it is a Subterranean Termite.  There is also a dark colored winged Alate image on BugGuide that is identified as belonging to the family Rhinotermitidae.  BugGuide has other images, many from California, that show black individuals that are identified as Subterranean Termites.  It is the nymphs and workers of the Termite colony that are light colored and sometimes called White Ants.  This does not appear to be the Western Subterranean Termite, Reticulitermes hesperus, which Charles Hogue profiles in Insects of the Los Angeles Basin where he indicates:  “In Los Angeles and much of the west, this is the species that causes the greatest damage.”  We believe you may be correct that the image may be illustrating the act of dispersing pheromones to attract a mate.  The newly matured reproductive individuals are known as Alates and they are winged.  They usually swarm after a rain, and the fact that you find them each year indicates there is most likely a colony in your home.  Subterranean Termites nest in the ground, so we would suspect they are probably in your crawl space, and if you find them in the kitchen and bathroom, there may be water damage to the wood in those areas of the home that are providing food for the colony.  It is important to stress that not all Termites are destructive to homes, and that in nature, Termites play an important role in breaking down rotting wood that becomes incorporated into the soil.

Termite Alate

Incredible feedback and I agree with everything you’re pointing out (not to mention, learning a ton!).
I am suspicious of a woodpile that’s just outside our house (about 3-4′ away) but certainly wonder how they’d be getting into the house unless they’re in the crawlspace…
Regardless, I would find some of the mud-tunneling areas outside the house – but would I find them even in the crawlspace? or would those possibly not be evident since it’s usually dark down there anyway… I read that they like the moisture so that mud tunnel job helps them retain that!
Thanks again!
Alex

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