NATCHEZ — Formosan termites — nicknamed super-termites — have apparently established themselves in Natchez and are here to stay.

Bug Busters owner Ricky Smith said his pest control company has seen three or four Formosan termite cases in the last week or so.

“I saw the first case in 1993, but I’ve never seen this many cases,” Smith said. “They’re turning up pretty regular. They’re a tropical termite, so it was always a question of whether or not they could get established, but they definitely are.”

Formosan termites are especially established in the area of Parkway Baptist Church, Smith said.

Formosan termites are much more aggressive than regular termites, Smith said.

“Whereas it would take a colony of regular termites about 10 years to destroy a house, Formosans can totally destroy a house in a year,” he said.

Dr. Dennis Ring, an entomologist specializing in termites at the LSU AgCenter, said Formosan termites are a golden honey color. Formosans also have hairs on their wings, unlike the natives. All but one of native termite species are black.

Formosan termite colonies can consist of up to 10 million termites, whereas native termite colonies average approximately 200,000 to 2 million termites, Ring said.

“It starts with two, and it takes years to get (up to 10 million),” he said.

When looking for signs of a termite infestation, Ring says to look for the winged termites, mud tubes , bubbles in wood or general damage to wood.

Ring recommends using bait traps or non-repellant termiticide to prevent termite infestations. A repellant termiticide is less effective, Ring said, because termites are able to detect it.

Formosan termites are more likely than native termites to find an alternative source of water outside their nest, Ring said.

“They’ll go find a sweating pipe, a leaking pipe … or a gutter full of water to provide water for them,” he said. “If they can’t find that, they’ll cut holes in the roof and wait for it to rain. That’s one of the things that makes them so difficult.”

Smith said he recently had a customer who spotted a few signs of termites before the customer left for vacation.

“The guy saw a couple of little dirt spots, and when he got back you wouldn’t believe the dirt tunnels in the house,” Smith said. “It went from a couple of spots to thousands of them in several rooms of the house, and that was in eight days. It was unreal.”

Regular termites, Smith said, usually swarm early in the morning on humid days in March and April.

Formosans, however, swarm mainly in June and around dusk.

“They’re also different in that when they do swarm, they are attracted to street lights,” Smith said.

Smith said it is important not to put off calling a pest control specialist if signs of termites are spotted.

“People need to know (Formosan termites are) here, and they’re established,” he said.

Once established in an area, Smith said, it is essentially impossible to eradicate Formosan termites.

“Formosan termites will be in Natchez, Miss., forever,” he said.

Formosans were introduced to the United States in the 1940s after World War II through infested crates and cargo from the South Pacific that was shipped back into the U.S. at the Port of New Orleans and other places.

Smith said Formosan termites are still being introduced through contaminated wood products. Normally if a piece of termite-infested wood is moved so the termites cannot return to their colony, the termites will die, Smith said.

“But not Formosans,” he said. “If you buy old or recycled wood with Formosans in it and bring it here, they can get started.”

It is difficult, even for a pest control specialist, to tell the difference between regular and Formosan termites, Smith said. Smith sent samples from recent cases to LSU’s AgCenter, which confirmed they were Formosan.

One of the most important things someone can do to prevent a termite infestation, Ring said, is to us pressure-treated wood in construction that kills termites and wood-destroying fungus and beetles when constructing a new house.

“Using all the pressure-treated wood you can is the single most important thing you can do,” Ring said.

The No. 1 way termites are spread, Ring said, is through infested railroad ties, commonly used for gardening, that are brought to a house and through telephone poles.

“Inspect very closely any wood or paper (products) to make sure you’re not bringing termites to your house,” he said.