On Sat, 04 Sep 2004 04:20:24 GMT, Lar transmitted this:

On Fri, 03 Sep 2004 13:13:26 GMT, TQuinn wrote:

I would guess that unless a queen, or several, very lucky reproductive swarmers
through some bad luck (yours) managed to end up in that bag or dirt, then you'd
have a problem. I was told that subterranean termite workers can't stray too
far from the colony, this by the exterminator that treated my house after my
foot went through my floor. Since then I've sort of become an advocate for
perimeter treatment of houses.

If you were to turn up a piece of wood and it had a number of
termites, now exposed running about, a percentage of them would be
secondary reproductives, so if that piece of wood (bag of mulch) was
transplanted to a new location and there was sufficient moisture, some
of those secondary repros would mate and a new queen would be made to
now start a new colony. The only perimeter treatment to do would be
with a product called Termidor, otherwise you will probably just push
then to the interior of the home.

....the workers can reproduce?

The piece of wood in my case is the beam that runs under my floor (which
couldn't be removed because it would've cost too much--long story), we didn't
see any new activity from the time the exterminator treated the house and we
pulled up the tiles to the time carpenter came to sister the beam and replace
the plywood floor, which was about two months.

I'll ask the exterminator if he used Termidor. I certainly hope so. -_-