10 Signs You Have Termites (and What to Do Next)

Termites are the single most damaging pest you can have in an Indian home. Unlike cockroaches or ants, they don't bother you at night or crawl across your food. They work quietly, out of sight, inside the wooden structure of your house — door frames, window frames, wardrobes, false ceilings, plywood, skirting.

By the time you notice a bulge in the paint or a hollow-sounding door frame, the colony has usually been feeding for six to twelve months. In severe cases, doors have come off their frames and wooden beams have collapsed. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research estimates that termites damage property worth thousands of crores across India every year, and the tropical climate of cities like Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai gives them near-perfect breeding conditions.

The good news is that termite damage is preventable, and even early infestations can be stopped completely if you act fast. This article walks you through the ten signs to look for, why each one matters, and what to do next.

This is the clearest, most reliable sign of subterranean termites — the species responsible for almost all termite damage in Indian homes. Mud tubes look like thin lines of dried mud, about the width of a pencil, running vertically up walls, along skirting, on the outside of the compound wall, or around wooden furniture.

Termites build these tubes because they dry out and die in open air. The tube is a covered tunnel that lets them travel between their underground colony and the wood they're eating. If you snap a mud tube open and see live pale-white insects inside, the colony is active. Even if you see no insects, an intact tube means termites were using it in the recent past.

Do not remove or brush off mud tubes yourself. A professional needs to see them to trace the direction and locate the colony.

Tap firmly on your door frames, window frames, wardrobe backs and wooden skirting. Healthy wood produces a solid, dense sound. Termite-damaged wood sounds hollow, papery, sometimes even like a soft drum. This is because termites eat the inside of the wood, leaving only a thin veneer of paint or wood surface intact.

In older homes and ground-floor flats, this is especially common on door frames touching the floor and on the back of wardrobes pressed against exterior walls.

Once or twice a year — usually right after the first monsoon rains — reproductive termites called alates fly out of the colony to start new colonies. They're attracted to light, so you'll often find dozens of small, pale, translucent wings scattered on window sills, under tube lights, or near sliding doors the morning after.

The termites themselves shed the wings as soon as they land. If you see the wings, a colony is nearby — either inside your home or within a few metres of it.

Termites secrete moisture as they tunnel. When they eat wood behind a wall or under paint on wooden panels, the moisture causes the paint to bubble, blister or crack in irregular patterns. Homeowners often mistake this for a water leak and repaint — which does nothing to stop the termites.

If you see bubbling paint on a wooden surface and you're sure there's no water leak, tap the surface and check for hollowness.

Doors and windows that used to close smoothly and now stick, sag or scrape the floor may be losing structural integrity from inside. Termites weaken the frame from within, and the frame slowly deforms under the weight of the door.

This is especially common in older wooden frames and in ground-floor flats with poor damp-proofing.

Drywood termites (less common in India but present in coastal areas) push their droppings — called frass — out of tiny holes in the wood. Frass looks like fine, pellet-shaped sawdust, usually piled below wooden furniture, door frames or ceilings.

If you see recurring small piles that reappear after you clean them, you're likely dealing with drywood termites.

Wooden and laminate flooring above a termite colony often warps, buckles or develops soft spots. This happens when moisture from the colony seeps into the underlay and, over time, into the flooring itself.

Soldier termites bang their heads against wood to signal danger to the colony. In a quiet room late at night, if you press your ear to an infested door frame, you can sometimes hear a faint clicking, rustling or dry-paper sound. This is a strong indicator of a large, active colony.

Termites eat cellulose, and paper is almost pure cellulose. If you store books, old files or cardboard boxes in built-in cupboards and find them tunnelled, glued to the shelf, or with mud smeared on them, termites are almost certainly the cause. Silverfish cause surface damage but never mud.

Termites reach your home from underground. Long before they enter your walls, they'll be active in the garden, in tree stumps, under stored firewood, along the outside of the compound wall, and in the soil beside the foundation. Walk the perimeter of your property once a month and look for mud tubes, especially after rain.

Book a professional inspection the same week. Termite damage compounds every month — a colony left untreated for six months can cost ten times more to repair than one treated immediately. Do not disturb mud tubes, do not spray the area yourself, and do not repaint the surface. All of these make it harder for a professional to trace the colony.

A professional termite technician will look for entry points around the foundation, trace mud tubes back to their source, and identify the species (subterranean vs drywood). Most Indian homes need one of two treatments: a chemical soil barrier drilled around the foundation, or wood injection where individual pieces of furniture are treated. Serious cases need both.

In almost every case, no. Termites live underground in colonies of tens of thousands of individuals, hundreds of metres from the wood they're eating. Surface sprays kill the workers you can see, which triggers the colony to send more workers through a different tunnel. This is why homeowners who treat termites themselves usually see the problem 'disappear' for a few months and then come back worse.

Professional treatment works because it targets the colony itself — either through non-repellent termiticides that workers unknowingly carry back to the queen, or through a physical soil barrier that seals the home off from the colony entirely.

Termites are the most damaging household pest in India, and they work silently. If you notice mud tubes, hollow-sounding wood, discarded wings, bubbling paint, sticking doors, frass, buckling floors, faint clicking, damaged paper, or mud trails on your compound wall — book a professional inspection immediately. Every month of delay increases the cost of repair, and DIY treatments almost never reach the colony.