What is the best control for termites?

Worker termites undertake the labours of foraging, food storage, brood, nest maintenance and some of the defence effort in certain species. Workers are the main caste in the colony for the digestion of cellulose in food. This is achieved in one of two ways. In all termite families except the Termitidae, there are flagellates (Protista) in the gut that assist in cellulose digestion. However, in the Termitidae, which account for approximately 60% of all termite species, the flagellates have been lost and this digestive role is taken up, in part, by a consortium of prokaryotic organisms. This simple story, which has been in Entomology textbooks for decades, is complicated by the finding that all studied termites can produce their own cellulase enzymes, and therefore can digest wood in the absence of their symbiotic microbes. Our knowledge of the relationships between the microbial and termite parts of their digestion is still rudimentary. What is true in all termite species, however, is that the workers feed the other members of the colony with substances derived from the digestion of plant material, either from the mouth or anus. This process of feeding of one colony member by another is known as trophallaxis, and is one of the keys to the success of the group as it frees the parents from feeding the young, allowing for the group to grow much larger and ensuring that the gut symbionts are transferred from one generation to another.