AUSTIN (KXAN) — A cloud of flying “super termites” may be headed to your home, according to an Austin exterminator.
Alan Brown, a board certified entomologist and technical training director for ABC Exterminators, told KXAN a colony of Formosan termites inside a building can eat 1-2 feet off a two-by-four every couple of days.
“They’re very destructive,” he said. “Compared to our native subterranean termites, they have much larger large numbers… you may have somewhere between 60 and 300,000 individuals in a colony, whereas with Formosans, it can well exceed over a million.”
The bugs first arrived in the U.S. at the Ports of New Orleans and Pasadena, Texas, in the 1950s, brought in on shipments from China and Southeast Asia…