Drywood Termites in Tampa: Frass and Holes
Drywood termites live entirely inside the wood with no contact with soil. They push waste out through small round kick-out holes, and it collects below as frass: hard six sided pellets that look like coarse pepper. Because they never touch the ground, a soil barrier or a bait system has no effect on them. Treatment is local injection or whole structure fumigation.
How to identify it
Frass is the main sign. It appears as a small cone shaped pile of pellets below a pinhole, on a windowsill, on top of a baseboard, on the garage floor under a header, or on a piece of furniture. The pellets are hard, about a millimeter long, six sided with rounded ends, and colored to match the wood they came from.
Kick-out holes are neat, round and about the width of a pin. Galleries inside are smooth and clean with no soil in them, which separates drywood from subterranean damage.
Swarmers are pale reddish brown and fly in spring and summer, often on a warm humid evening. Piles of shed wings on a sill are common.
Where they show up and why
In the wood itself. Window and door frames, sills, casings, baseboards, fascia and exposed rafter tails, attic framing, porch beams, hardwood floors and solid wood furniture.
The older housing stock around Seminole Heights, South Tampa and the other pre-war neighborhoods is where we find them most, because those houses are framed and trimmed in heart pine with plenty of exposed and reachable wood. A swarmer needs only a crack in unpainted timber, a joint between two boards, or a nail hole to get started. Unlike their subterranean cousins, they need no soil contact and very little moisture.
What works, and what does not
Start with a proper inspection, including the attic. Drywood colonies are slow and localized, so knowing how many separate sites exist decides everything.
Contained activity in accessible wood is treated by drilling into the gallery and injecting, and the wood is then sealed. Where activity is widespread or hidden inside walls, whole structure fumigation is the reliable answer, carried out under a separate license with a tent over the building.
Soil barriers and bait stations do nothing here. Neither do orange oil claims to clear a whole house, because any injected product only reaches the galleries it physically enters. Sealing and painting exposed wood does help as prevention.
Common questions
How do I tell frass from sawdust?
Look closely, ideally with a phone camera zoomed in. Drywood frass is made of hard, uniform pellets about a millimeter long with six flat sides and rounded ends, and it pours like fine sand. Sawdust is irregular and fibrous. Carpenter bee and beetle waste is powdery and smears. Frass does not smear, and it keeps reappearing after you sweep it up.
Do I definitely need the house tented?
No. Activity confined to one accessible area, such as a run of trim, a window frame or a single header, can often be drilled and injected locally. Fumigation becomes the sensible answer when activity shows in several separated parts of the structure, or inside walls and framing that cannot be reached. An inspection decides which.
Where do they come from?
Through the air. Swarmers fly from an infested structure or tree, land on exposed wood, pair off and chew into a crack to start a colony. That means attic framing, fascia, exposed rafter tails and unpainted trim are the usual entry surfaces. Infested furniture and reclaimed lumber bring them into a house too.