There’s a whole city hiding underground.

Because you can’t see the termite colony, it’s possible to pretend you don’t have a termite problem. But, visible or not, termites are real. In fact, they may be scurrying around under your feet right now.

Termites love a moist, temperature-stable environment. The soil under your yard is the ideal spot, below the frost line but above the water table and bedrock. In this hidden spot, worker termites:

• Build a nest for the colony, with rooms to accommodate reproductives, eggs and nymphs
• Create a vast network of pencil-width tunnels through the soil
• Constantly forage for food, up to 350 feet from the nest, with total foraging territory up to ½ acre

When any termite finds a food source, it leaves a pheromone scent trail to recruit other termites from the colony to the food source. This scent trail is part of the colony’s communication system.

As they forage, termites often have to cross something they can’t chew through — such as a concrete foundation — to reach an above-ground food source. To do so, they build mud tubes out of packed earth, saliva and bits of chewed cellulose to protect them from drying out or being attacked by ants. They also use this material to seal in moisture while they’re lunching inside lumber, and sometimes to create an above-ground colony.

A successful mature colony with a ready food source typically includes several thousand individual termites, but it can be as large as several million. Two to four years after a colony begins, reproductive swarmers set out to find mates, dig in to the ground and establish their own subcolonies. These new colonies may grow and thrive on their own, or eventually reunite with the main colony. A swarm increases the risk for every house in the neighborhood.

Termites aren’t cute to look at. But not seeing them can be even more frightening. You don’t know where they are. And you don’t know what they might be doing to the structural support of your home. Fortunately, there are ways to spy on foraging workers and strike back.