What Do Drywood Termites Look Like?

Drywood termites are a group of species that nest directly inside the wood they feed on. They need no contact with soil and very little moisture, which lets them live in structural timber, furniture, picture frames, bookshelves, firewood, and dead limbs on standing trees. The colony takes in enough water from the wood itself and from its own digestion to get by, and it never has to come outside.

They do best in warm, dry climates, which is why they are a familiar structural pest in the far southwest. In Texas they are the exception rather than the rule. Most of the state's termite damage is done by subterranean species, including the Formosan termite along the Gulf Coast, and a drywood infestation here most often arrives in a piece of furniture, a stack of lumber, or a reclaimed beam rather than from the yard. Along the coast and in the southern part of the state they do turn up on their own, so it pays to know what you are looking at.

The difficult thing about drywood termites is how little they show. There are no tubes on the foundation and no soft, damp wood to notice. If you suspect a piece of wood in your home has them, the sensible step is an inspection before the colony spreads to the wood next to it.

The two signs most people notice are a swarm and the wings left behind afterwards. Swarmers come out of the wood in numbers over an hour or two, head for windows and lights, and drop their wings soon after landing. A scatter of identical clear wings on a windowsill or in a door track, with no insects in sight, is a termite swarm you missed.

The sign that is specific to drywood termites is their droppings. Drywood frass is made of hard, dry pellets about a millimetre long, six-sided with slightly rounded ends, in a colour that follows the wood being eaten, from pale tan to near black. The termites push it out through kick-out holes, so it collects in small conical piles directly beneath the infested wood: on a sill, along a baseboard, on a shelf under a beam. Subterranean termites, by contrast, use their waste to build tubes and pack their galleries, so there are no droppings of theirs to find. If you have found pellets, you have drywood termites. Our guide to what termite droppings look like has the detail on telling frass from sawdust and from carpenter ant debris.

Because the piles are small and the holes are often plugged, an infestation can run for years without anyone connecting the dots. In areas where drywood termites are established, a regular inspection is how they get caught early.