In regard to subterranean termites, pest management professionals often only concern themselves with the termite colony as a whole. PMPs usually don't consider the behavior of individual termites within the colony. Jeff Whitman, a Master's student at UGA, videographed and scored worker termite behavior.

He found that the entire range of worker actions fell into four basic categories: 1) walking and resting, 2) grooming, 3) eating and 4) excavating. Aside from walking and resting, individual termites spent most of their time grooming other termites. Termite workers will clean their own antennae but depend on their nest mates for overall body cleanliness.

Jeff recorded workers chewing and swallowing five things: 1) cellulose they picked up themselves, 2) something picked up while grooming another termite, 3) regurgitation, 4) something requested from another termite's mouth and 5) something requested from another termite's rear end.

In studying individual termites, Jeff found no consistency or pattern in the type of food acquisition of each termite. One termite might not eat for 24 hours, a second might have 10 meals from another termite's mouth and three from another's rear end, while a third might have 20 meals of cellulose debris it picked up for itself and two each from the mouth and rear end of a fellow termite. However, when Jeff combined the data from 36 termites, he found a one-third split between the three different types of food acquisition schemes for the colony. The apparent inconsistency in feed habits of individuals developed a pattern when compared in a colony setting.

He also found, when he examined the time spent in each of the four basic activities, that the average worker does nothing – walking and resting – for 80 percent of the day, but if he took into account the entire colony as a whole, at any given time, a portion of the colony was always doing something. One may ask, how can an insect that spends about 80 percent of its time doing nothing cause so much damage? Because a colony has enough members to always have some members feeding on cellulose in structures.

Recently, I have received many phone calls concerning the EPA's 2009 pyrethroid labeling initiative. Copies can be found here. Back in late 2011, Chuck Andrews from the Department of Pesticide Regulation sent a letter to the EPA wanting clarification on a few issues concerning language in the label. The EPA responded in October 2011. This letter is now posted in PDF form. The copy of this letter has the questions DPR posed and the EPA's response to each question. Hopefully, this letter will help clarify misunderstandings some of our members might have. For further questions call Dave Braness from Bayer at (408) 205-8917. Dave has been going around the state educating pest control operators about the label changes.