What Do Baby Termites Look Like?
Adult termites are far easier to spot than young ones. A baby termite cannot damage a structure yet, but it is going to become an adult that can. Here is what each stage looks like and how to tell termites apart from the insects people confuse them with.
Small, pale, soft-bodied, and almost never out in the open.
A baby termite, properly a nymph, is a few millimetres long, white to translucent, and soft-bodied. It looks less like an insect you would recognise and more like a pale grain of rice with legs. They have no wings and no hard shell, and they cannot tolerate open air for long, which is why you find them inside wood or inside a mud tube rather than walking across a floor.
That last point is the useful one. If you are seeing pale insects out in the open, they are usually not termite nymphs. If you break open a piece of damaged wood or a mud tube and pale insects spill out, they very likely are.
The reason it is worth knowing: by the time a colony is producing visible numbers of young, it has been established a while. The National Pest Management Association puts termite damage in the United States at more than 5 billion dollars a year, and almost none of that is covered by homeowners insurance.
Egg, nymph, and what a nymph turns into
Termites move through three stages, and the third one splits into castes that look nothing like each other.
Eggs
Everything starts with the queen. Termite eggs are small, white, translucent, and shaped a little like jelly beans. You will almost never see them, because they sit deep in the nest rather than out where people look.
Baby termites, or nymphs
When the eggs hatch, what comes out is small, pale, and colorless. At that point a nymph has not become anything yet. Depending on what the colony needs, it will develop into a worker, a soldier, or a reproductive.
Worker termites
Workers are most of the colony and they do nearly all of the work: building tunnels, grooming and cleaning other termites, and finding food. They are white with soft bodies and have no eyes and no wings. Their job is digesting cellulose, which is the main structural component of wood and grass, and it is the reason termite damage happens at all.
Soldier termites
Soldiers defend the colony and are the easiest caste to identify: a large brownish head on a pale body, with long dark mandibles at the front. If you crack open a mud tube and see something with an oversized head, that is a soldier.
Reproductive termites
Also called swarmers. These are the ones that leave to start a new colony, and they are the caste most people actually see. They have large eyes, dark brown or black bodies, and two pairs of wings. They are very commonly mistaken for flying ants.
When you are most likely to see them
Once a colony outgrows its space, it sends reproductives out to start new ones. In Texas that happens in spring and into early summer, usually on a warm day after rain. A swarm is not a few insects; it is commonly several hundred to a thousand moving together near the area they intend to colonise.
The ones that survive shed their wings, pair off, and become the king and queen of a new colony. This is why discarded wings on a windowsill or in a door track are such a reliable sign. The swarmers themselves move on, but the wings stay where they fell.
Where each kind of termite nests
The nest tells you as much as the insect does, and it changes what treatment looks like.
Subterranean termites
The species that matters most in this part of Texas. Colonies live in moist soil underground and can reach into the millions. They build mud tubes, which are pencil-width tunnels of soil and saliva, to bridge from the ground to wood without exposing themselves to open air. Those tubes on a slab or pier are often the first visible sign.
Dampwood termites
These nest in wet, rotting wood and are noticeably larger than the other species. They follow moisture, so they turn up around leaks, rotted deck boards, and wood in ground contact rather than in sound structural timber.
Drywood termites
Drywood termites nest inside the wood they are eating, with no soil connection at all. Roof framing and wall supports are typical. Because there are no mud tubes to spot, they tend to go unnoticed for longer.
Three differences that settle it
Winged termites and winged ants both show up in spring and both are dark and small, which is why they get mixed up constantly. Three things tell them apart:
- Wings.A termite’s four wings are all the same length. An ant’s front pair is noticeably longer than the back pair.
- Antennae. Termite antennae run straight. Ant antennae have a distinct elbow bend in them.
- Waist.A termite’s body runs in a straight line from thorax to abdomen. An ant has an obvious pinch at the waist.
These are small differences on a small insect. If you are not sure, keep one in a sealed bag and have it identified rather than guessing, because the two lead to completely different treatments.
Making the structure less worth colonising
- Use treated lumber for decks, fences, and any other wood structure in ground contact.
- Fit metal shielding along the foundation when building or adding on.
- Keep firewood, lumber piles, and dead stumps well away from the house rather than against it.
- Fix the moisture problems first. Damp wood is what draws them in the first place.
And the signs worth acting on:
- Frass, which is termite droppings, in small piles that look like sawdust or coffee grounds.
- Discarded wings in windowsills and door tracks.
- A hollow sound when you knock on wood that should be solid.
- Mud tubes running up a slab, pier, or foundation wall.
Get it identified before you treat it
Termite damage is slow and quiet until it is not, and the treatment depends entirely on which species and where the nest is. Our termite technicians can inspect the structure and tell you what you are actually dealing with.
Keep reading
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