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Why Removing Your Termite-Infested Fence Isn't Enough to Deter Termites

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Have termites left your wooden fence a tunnel-filled ruin? Then, naturally, your first course of action should be to remove the fence and deprive the termites of their food source. However, stopping there would be unwise — even if you plan to erect a non-wooden fence in place of the old one. Simply removing a termite colony's food source is not enough. You could even make things worse!

The best course of action is to remove the fence and then locate and destroy the termite colony that targeted your fence. Otherwise, you could be in for a shock.

Termites Are Always Foraging for Wood

You could remove your fence, burn it and kill any remaining termites in the area. While at first glance, this seems like a great idea, in the longer term, doing that could make things much worse for you and your home. Termites don't sleep or slow down at night, unlike other insects like ants. While you sleep, they continue to forage for food.

This means that even though you have removed their food source on your property, and terminated the invading termites, you likely haven't stopped the invasion. The remaining termites, possibly thousands upon thousands, will continue to seek out more wood on your property in an effort to replace the wood that you removed. Unfortunately, your home could be next.

Termites Will Forage Over Great Distances

You cannot simply wipe out the invading termites and then relax. While your actions will dissuade the termites for a while, their hunger for wood will bring them back to their old hunting grounds. The pheromones that foraging termites leave will make sure that their comrades locate the general area of your yard as they search for wood.

And even if you find no traces of the termites anywhere else in your yard in the days following your removal of the fence, you can't be sure they won't come back. Did you know that termites will travel 60 meters to find food? That's over half the length of the average Australian rugby pitch. So, with that in mind, simply removing a fence won't help.

You Need to Destroy the Colony

If your fence is infested with termites, by all means, remove the fence. However, consider hiring a pest control service to eradicate the colony that damaged your fence, because they may very well return. Next time they could attack your house. Fortunately, with the help of a baiting system put down by a professional termite treatment service, you could destroy the colony within weeks.

Have termites invaded your fence? Then don't simply settle for replacement. Replace the fence with something sturdier and eradicate the termite colony once and for all.


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