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doctorsteve

termites in my stockpile of woodchips

doctorsteve
16 years ago

Last month I had two trees taken down, and got a substantial pile of woodchips, which I have been planning to use as mulch.

Today, I started to shovel chips into the wheelbarrow, and found that the woodchip pile is swarming with termite workers. This seems like a different scenario than most I've found in searches, which are people wondering whether woodchips will "attract" termites, or worrying about finding some in a bag. Here I've undoubtedly got a native colony -- thankfully at the back property line and not near any structures.

Wondering if I should count this pile as a loss, or whether transporting barrelloads of chips with termites to garden beds (nearer, though not touching, house or shed) will pose a risk or instead will just remove bunches of workers from their nice moist mound to die lonely deaths when a thinner layer of mulch they are now in dries out.

Reason seems to tell me that unless I happen to relocate the queen, they are not going to establish a new colony wherever I dump a wheelbarrow-full of them, but if I'm wrong, it would be a potentially costly mistake.

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