If you’ve had a termite infestation in our home or workplace, you would probably be aware of the level of destruction they bring along. A termite colony contains termites anywhere from several hundred to several millions, all of which feed on wood, cloth, paper and even wires, and soft plastic. Terminator, an efficacious anti-termite wood preservative, has learned a lot about this tiny insect in order to be able to control and eradicate it. Here is what we know about the termite family. Termites are social insects, which live in a nest or colony consisting of various groups of individuals, each group having a different role to perform. It is known as the caste system.
Termite Castes
The making of a new colony starts with a mating flight, wherein the winged reproductive termites (males and females) leave their parents’ home to find a suitable pair. Once they do find their pair, they build themselves a colony, of which they become the queen and the king. They both form the centre of the termite life-cycle and the colony, and are responsible for reproduction and taking care of their young ones. The queen termite can lay more than 30,000 eggs in a single day. Once the baby termites (eggs or larvae) grow, they resume the role of any one of the three following castes. The worker caste is the largest group in the colony. They are soft-bodied, wingless termites, who do all of the hard labour in the colony: constructing tunnels and chambers, and feeding and grooming other termite castes. The soldier caste, on the other hand, are larger in size but fewer in number than the workers. As the name suggests, the job of the soldier termite is to guard the nest and protect it from attacks by ants or other invaders. In times of danger, they bang their bodies against the mound to cause vibrations and warn others. The reproductive caste or alates, on getting wings, swarm from the parent nest for a mating flight. After which their wings break off and they settle to start a new colony, and the rotation continues.
End Of Termites 