Jul. 4—Termites may be small, but they can cause massive damage to a home over an extended period of time.

Tyler Nipper, general manager of Cherokee Pest Control, said the insects found in Oklahoma are Subterranean termites. Nipper said any cellulose-based material, except for treated lumber, can be eaten by termites, including paper, cardboard, and dead trees. Termites are not often transferred from one location to the other, as they are usually everywhere in the soil.

“You can go out in your yard and take a shovel and scrape the grass off the grounds, take a piece of wood — a pine board, or a piece of split firewood — and lay it down right there in that bare spot of soil. You could have termites in it within a week, or it might take a year or two,” Nipper said.

Nipper said that every year, people will call about finding termites with wings while working in flower beds, but these insects are usually flying ants. Nipper said termites with wings are generally found during swarming season, from around March through May in Oklahoma.

“Once you have an active infestation of termites in the home, or out in a stump in the woods, or wherever, in the springtime — when the condition are correct — we will have what we call a swarm of termites,” Nipper said. “They look like black ants and they have wings. They will be flying out of the wall, an exit hole in the sheetrock, a baseboard. You’ll come home from work and your whole entryway of your house will be covered with these things. A lot of them will be dead and their wings will fall off.”

Termites do not cause damage in a short amount of time. Measures can be taken to help prevent destruction even before a house is built.

Before a concrete slab is poured, Nipper said, a pre-treatment may be done to avoid termite issues for two decades. Nipper said a termite company may spray liquid termiticide in the dirt fill beneath the slab. The barrier created by the termiticide generally lasts for 20 years.

Nipper recommends a yearly or biannual maintenance spray in crawl spaces or the base of the soil around the outside of the home. The spray can help kill seasonal bugs, spiders, ants and crickets.

“From a financial perspective, that is really the only reasonable thing you can do to prevent a termite problem from showing up, and it is certainly not a guarantee to prevent it,” Nipper said. “There are a lot of other little factors that go into that.”

Nipper said termite treatment requires be done underneath the house to the soil in a crawl space, and for a concrete slab, drilling must be done with chemicals pumped through the holes. Bricks homes must have holes drilled every two bricks, while a rock veneer home will need drilling every 18 inches. A trench is then dug by the home down to the footing, and this gap is filled with chemicals. Nipper said the chemical will soak into the soil by the foundation. The soil is then placed back in the trench and sprayed.

Some preventive measures can be done by avoiding stacking hardwood and firewood against a house, and by placing cedar and/or cypress mulch in flower beds.

“Termites do not like cedar and cypress wood,” Nipper said. “They will eat it, but they do not like to.”

Since termites thrive in moist conditions, Nipper said, people need to be aware of moisture near the house, as standing water or drainage can dilute the spray. Nipper recommends extending down spouts so the moisture is not as close to the building. Any kind of wood debris or moisture underneath a home in a crawl space can create an ideal condition for termites.