How to kill termites?

© derekkeats (Flickr) Flying termites
© derekkeats (Flickr)
Hire a professional
Professional help
One sure way to get rid of termites is to hire a professional pest control company and let them do the work for you.
They will most likely have to come out for an initial consultation and then let you know the steps they will need to take.

If the termite population is large, it can be expensive to use a pest control company, but not doing anything about the problem will be much more expensive in the long run.
Do it yourself
Get rid of the termites yourself
If you don’t want to pay out a lot of money, you can learn how to get rid of termites yourself and take control of the problem without outside help.

There are a few things to know first.
You need to determine whether you have dry-wood termites or subterranean termites.
Typically, only around 10% of termite problems will involve dry-wood termites and the other 90% are subterranean termites.
With subterranean termites, you will see mud shelter tubes and with dry-wood termites you will instead notice small holes.

Termite traps
This is one of the most popular ways to kill termites yourself.
These are found in hardware stores and they are not that expensive.
There are two kinds of termite traps that you can use – one is the termite stake, which are placed in the ground area around the home and the other is the termite in-home bait that is put near areas where you have seen termite activity.

Neither of these methods work immediately but are used as proactive measures or a means to an end.
Once the termites come across the poison, they will take it back to their colony and eventually the colony will die off.
Like ants, you must first kill the queen, which is why it is important to have adopt of these methods since these affect the entire colony.