Marc Fisher
Texas A&M University
Department of Entomology
Center for Urban and Structural Entomology
College Station, Texas 77843
(979) 845-7114
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Everyone, at some point in their life, has had an ant farm. You get the colony so that you can see what the heck those ants do after carrying that piece of grasshopper twenty times their size down that hole smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. And, the same thing always happens: You set up the ant farm, the ants dig their tunnels, you shake up the ant colony, the ants re-dig their tunnels, you shake up the ant colony, the ants re-dig their tunnels, you shake up the ant colony, etc. Finally, you realize that about the only thing different your colony will do from your neighbor’s colony is . . . well, nothing. So, after the initial excitement, you give up on the colony and before long the colony is just a heap of dry exoskeleton. I am proposing, in the spirit of having a greener lawn than your neighbor’s, a new, exciting, subterranean pet: the subterranean termite (Isoptera: Rhinotermitidae).

I was introduced to the concept upon my arrival for graduate studies in entomology at Texas A&M University (Gig ‘Em!). I was accepted as a student under the wonderful tutelage of Dr. Roger Gold, with the responsibility to work on termites (which I had never seen in my life). On my first day in the lab, I was initiated into the tight-knit urban grad student crowd by being given the dreaded “Termite Trap Duty”. Along with Bryce Bushman, a fellow insectophile, we gathered together our tools of destruction: two axes, two spades, a posthole digger, a bucket full of water, a small, lid-covered, plastic bucket with its bottom cut off, a strange assemblage of pieces of wood (to be explained later), and a bag of Doritoes®. I had no idea what to expect. After traveling in an old, blue truck that looked like it had gotten into a fight with an eighteen-wheeler gone mad, we arrived at a secluded,heavily forested area. I was then instructed to look for termites. Needless to say, the ax and the spade came in handy. It wasn’t but a few minutes after I began whacking into dead logs with a vengeance that Bryce yelled over for me to come. When I arrived at the site, Bryce pointed to the log he had been working on. Streams of “white ants” were flowing from the wood. We had found our target.

One month later, we returned. This time, all we needed was a bucket to carry home our new labmates. Upon opening the lid of the bucket and lifting up the wooden block we found hundreds of termites, scurrying on the block and inside the spaces between the wooden pieces. We placed the blocks in the bucket, introduced the termites to the back of a pickup truck, and headed home.

Once you get home with your termites, you will need a place to keep them. I’ll tell you what we do in our lab and then you can make any changes you want. But, I have to warn you. Termites eat wood. Homes are made of wood. Termites can eat your home. If you lose your home, don’t come to mine asking for a room. So, be careful how you handle them and don’t let little Johnny Termite run off with little Susie Termite into a crack in your wall. Here are my suggestions:

1. Soak several wooden tongue depressors in water for a few hours ahead of time (remember how termites need moist environments). These will be both food and harborage for your termites.
2. Have prepared several clean plastic (or glass if you are rich) petri dishes with their lids to house the termites.
3. Cut the tongue depressors in half to make them small enough to fit into the petri dishes. Then stack them as I have shown in figure 3, with three pieces on each level, four levels high.
4. 
   Unscrew the blocks and place the termites from one trap into the petri dish with wood in it and cover it with the petri dish lid. If you decide to place two different colonies into one petri dish, prepare for WWIII.
5. Place all your “colonies” of petri dishes into a plastic shoebox and keep a lid on the shoebox. Remember, termites need moisture, and the lids keep that moisture in. Now, you are in business.

Once you have your colonies you will need to do some maintenance every once in a while. Be sure to keep the environment moist but don’t try to teach your termites to swim. If the wood appears moist, then you are okay. Also, termites haven’t quite figured out that when they eat the wood, they are also eating their own home. So, you will need to replace the tongues depressors every once in a while. Finally, keep the termites out of the sun. However, you won’t want to place them inside your dark closet for two reasons. First, you probably wouldn’t ever find them again in that mess. Second, you won’t be able to observe them.

Now that you know how to collect termites and how to keep them in colonies, I feel I must become a salesman for my idea. Termites are incredible. You will find them interesting to study mainly because, unlike ants, they aren’t insects you have seen everyday since the time you tried as a kid to make a sandcastle in a fire-ant mound. Also, termites exhibit some awesome behaviors. You can watch them eat wood or eat themselves (they can be cannibalistic). You will see them build tunnel-like structures with their feces. You’ll find workers that never stop moving, reproductives that have huge abdomens and can lay hundreds of eggs, and soldiers with massive jaws and heads used to tear apart enemies. Termites won’t sting your loved ones. And, one of the best things about termites is that they are cheap to keep. They won’t eat you out of house and home . . . you hope.

For some good readings on the life history of termites and other relevant information see the following:

- Termites: Biology and Pest Management, by M. J. Pearce

- An Introduction to the Insects, by D. J. Borrer, C. A. Triplehorn, and N. F. Johnson