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Staff Experience,
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can Trust !!!
 The ice
melts, the cold ends, and the sun comes out.
-What do ya know? Spring is around
the corner.
With the coldest winter in many years wrapping up, many
people in the area are readily anticipating a warm Spring season with
trees budding, birds chirping, and flowers blooming. We’ve been hibernating in
our cozy homes suffering from “cabin fever” and short days of sunlight. As soon
as we start getting some warm sunny days, we will all seemingly burst outdoors
to enjoy some gardening, landscaping, and recreational activities just to get
that soothing, therapeutic feeling of warm sunlight on our skin. These dreams
of outside, open-air freedom transcend from animals and plants to insects and
pests. With a heavenly sense of Spring comes irritating, annoying, and even
damaging bug season.
Insects have been held back by the weather since the first
frost and what is commonly referred to as a period of limited activity.
(Although many of our customers who had insects nest inside their homes would
disagree.) These insects have been waiting, just like you, for the warmth of
Spring. With the ground moist and warmth in the air, insects escape from their
winter retreats to mate, gather food, and set up new nests for their offspring
to grow.
Some insects exhibit a great exodus during the Spring.
Termites are the most ominous of these as they are a sign of a colony that could
potentially be destroying your home. Eastern Subterranean Termites are the
species found
 in our
area. They nest in the ground and travel to food sources on a daily basis, even
during cold weather. Termites are interested in the cellulose found in wood.
Mother Nature intended for these valuable creatures to breakdown dead trees,
stumps, and limbs in an effort to keep the forests clean of such debris.
Unfortunately, the termite doesn’t know the difference between a decaying tree
in the woods and the lumber holding your home together. To make matters worse,
we build our homes out of pine lumber which is a termite’s favorite food on the
menu.
Termites can nest up to 200 feet away and randomly forage
until finding a wood source to feed upon. Their random foraging habits allow
them to find dead trees, wood piles, the wood in your home, cardboard, backing
of sheetrock, and even artwork and books! We are often asked how termites
find the wood in homes when they are built over slabs or built above the ground
with a masonry foundation crawl space construction. Termites will exploit any
crack and crevice in a structure to find their food, but they do not like to be
in the open air. (Except their reproductive stage) To reach an area above
ground, they will build a dirt shelter tube that they keep moist. These shelter
tubes act as super highways for termites to travel between their nests and their
food source. Many times these shelter tubes are built in areas seemingly
invisible to the untrained eye.
When a colony has grown large enough and has a good food
source, some of the termites in the colony will transform in the reproductive
alates (or swarmers). These are the hundreds of termites that appear out of
nowhere on a warm, spring day. Their job is emerge, mate, shed their wings, and
tunnel back into the ground to set up new colonies. A mature colony has been
feeding in an area 3-5 years! (almost always unnoticed) This mature colony has
anywhere from 200,000 to a million members in it. Often satellite colonies and
other independent colonies have set up nests in this same time period making the
situation even worse. So, by the time you come home to find termite swarmers or
their wings on your window sill or some other sun lit area, termites have
already established a strong presence at your home.
 Click
to Enlarge Photo of Reproductive Termite Swarmers
Even an immature colony can consume a 1 foot section of 2x4
lumber in 5 months. That may not sound like much, but they don’t find just one
spot and feed. What if they picked an inch or two here and an inch or two there
and those were strategic areas supporting the structure of your home? With
termites, there is no “small problem”
Termites can be found everywhere in our area. You could
lay a piece of wood on the ground in any yard in our area and within a short
period of time, it will be infested with termites. Termites are not just a
“down the street” or an “across town” problem. They are everywhere.
Click Photo to Enlarge Termite Incidence Map
If your home is not under Bill’s Exterminating Company’s
Termite Protection Plan, give us a call or click
 .
We would also like to send you free information by mail. You need to protect
your most valuable investment, your home, against termite infestation that could
lead to costly damage and lessen the value of your home.
Enjoy the warmth of Spring in your home and garden with
peace of mind this year; the peace of mind of knowing that a Bill’s
Exterminating Company QualityPro Professional
backed by 200years of staff experience in termite and pest control is protecting
your home.
Interested
in termite protection? ask us
about our
Termite
Control Guarantee: If you, our service professional, or anyone else
ever discovers termite activity while protected under our program, we will
eliminate it ASAP at no additional cost.
Bill's
Exterminating Co., Inc. offers
and  termite control
solutions.
Active area Termidor
treatment in combination with Advance Termite Baiting System
is a very powerful
protection program in the control and prevention of termite infestations.
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