Termite Droppings, Frass and Mud Tubes: Reading the Signs in a Sydney Home
People search for termite droppings expecting to find little piles of pellets somewhere near the damage. In a Sydney home, they rarely will, and going looking for them is one of the reasons active termite activity gets missed for years.
This page sets out what each sign actually means, which ones apply here, and what to do when you find one.
The correction that matters most
Frass, meaning visible piles of termite droppings, is a drywood termite sign. The species that destroys houses in Sydney is subterranean termites, and they do not produce it. They use their droppings as a building material instead. In Sydney, the signs to look for are mud tubes and discarded wings, not pellets.
Why Sydney is a subterranean termite city
Australia has both drywood and subterranean termites, and they behave nothing like each other.
Drywood termites live entirely inside the piece of timber they are eating. They have no contact with soil and no need for moisture from the ground. Because their galleries are sealed, they have to get rid of their waste, so they cut small kick-out holes and push the pellets out. Those pellets accumulate below as a small pile of dry, gritty, six-sided grains, roughly the colour of the timber. That pile is frass, and it is a genuinely useful sign where drywood termites occur, which in Australia is chiefly parts of the far north and some coastal pockets, along with the occasional infestation carried in imported furniture.
Subterranean termites are the destructive group across the Sydney basin. They nest in or in contact with soil, and they need to keep their workings humid, so they never expose themselves to open air. Rather than expelling waste, they mix their faeces with soil and saliva and use it as mortar to build with. That material becomes the mud tubes on your piers, the mud packing inside a hollowed-out skirting board, and the mud that fills the cracks in an attacked timber.
So the droppings are still there. They have been turned into the walls. If you are hunting for a pile of pellets in a Sydney house, you are looking for the wrong thing, and the thing you should be looking for is often only a metre away.
Mud tubes, and how to read them
Mud tubes, also called shelter tubes or galleries, are the single most reliable subterranean termite sign in a Sydney property.
What they look like: narrow tracks of dried mud, usually somewhere between the width of a pencil and the width of a thumb, running in a fairly straight line. They are the colour of the surrounding soil, gritty, and they crumble when broken. Wider fan-shaped sheets appear where a colony is working a large area.
Where to look:
- Up the face of brick or concrete piers in the subfloor
- On the inside of foundation walls and on the slab edge
- Behind and inside garden retaining walls, particularly sleeper walls
- Up the outside of a wall from the garden bed, sometimes hidden behind a downpipe, a hot water unit or a stack of stored timber
- Inside wall cavities, visible where a cornice or a skirting has separated
- Running along the underside of bearers and joists
- Free-standing drop tubes hanging down from a floor frame, which look like stalactites
How to tell whether a tube is active: A technician may break a small section of a tube and monitor whether it is repaired. If the colony is working the tube, it will be repaired within a few days, sometimes overnight. If it stays open after a week, that route is not currently in use. It does not mean the property is clear, only that this particular tube is not.
Do not pull the whole tube apart, and do not open up a damaged timber to see what is inside. Disturbance makes a colony abandon that section and move somewhere else in the building, which loses you the evidence and makes the eventual treatment harder to target. Our post on mud tubes, clicking sounds and hollow timber in Sydney homes goes through the field signs in more detail.
Discarded wings, and what a swarm means
Once a colony is mature, it produces winged reproductives, called alates. They leave in a flight, usually on a warm, humid evening, most often through spring and early summer, and they are drawn to light. They fly badly and briefly, then land and deliberately shed their wings.
What you find afterwards is a scatter of small, pale, translucent wings, all four of them roughly the same length, collecting:
- On window sills and in window tracks
- Around external and internal light fittings
- In cobwebs on a verandah
- On the surface of a swimming pool
- In sinks, basins and shower recesses
Wings inside the house are a serious finding. It can mean a flight came in through a window, but it can equally mean the colony is already in the building. Either way, it means a mature colony is close.
Termite alate or flying ant
They are confused constantly, so the differences are worth having:
| Termite | Ant | |
|---|---|---|
| Waist | Broad and straight, no narrowing | Sharply pinched |
| Antennae | Straight, like a string of tiny beads | Bent, with a distinct elbow |
| Wings | Four wings all about the same length, longer than the body | Front pair noticeably longer than the back pair |
| Wings after landing | Shed deliberately, found in piles | Kept |
| Colour | Pale to mid brown, soft looking | Usually darker and hard shelled |
The other signs worth knowing
- Hollow-sounding timber. Tap along skirting boards, architraves, door frames and window reveals with a knuckle or the handle of a screwdriver. Termites eat from the inside out and leave a thin shell, so an attacked section sounds papery, and the sound changes as you move along it
- Rippled or blistered paint, and skirting that looks slightly bowed or dented. What you are seeing is the paint film holding over a void
- Mud in cracks. Fine mud packed into a crack in a skirting, an architrave, or a floorboard joint is workings, not dirt
- Doors and windows that suddenly stick, where nothing has changed with the weather
- Sagging or spongy floors, and cornices pulling away
- Clicking or rustling from a wall on a quiet night, which is soldiers signalling by banging their heads against the timber
Damp, rotting timber gets blamed for a lot of this and is genuinely a different problem, although the two often occur in the same spot because both like moisture. We separated them into termites versus wood rot.
What to do when you find any of it
- Leave it alone. Do not break open workings, do not remove the damaged timber, and do not spray anything on it. Retail insecticide kills the few termites it touches and drives the rest of the colony to a different part of the building
- Photograph it and note exactly where it is
- Book an inspection. Termite damage is progressive, and the time between finding the first mud tube and doing something about it is the part that costs money
- Do not disturb the moisture source either. A leaking tap, a blocked downpipe or a poorly drained garden bed is often what drew the colony to that wall, and the inspection needs to see it as it is
What Pest Power does about termites in Sydney
A termite job starts with a proper inspection, and the inspection is the deliverable. You should come away knowing what species is present, where the activity is, where the conducive conditions are, and what the treatment options actually cost.
- A full property inspection covering the subfloor, roof void, interior, external perimeter, fences, retaining walls, stored timber, tree stumps and garden beds, not a walk around the living room
- Activity confirmed and located rather than guessed at, including conducive conditions such as drainage, leaks, garden beds built up over the slab edge and timber in ground contact
- Treatment options explained, which for a Sydney property generally means either a chemical soil treatment or an in-ground and above-ground baiting system. We compared them in chemical termite barriers versus baiting systems
- Annual inspection scheduling, because termite management is a program rather than a single visit. What an annual inspection includes is set out in our guide to the annual termite inspection
- Same-day and after-hours attendance across Sydney when activity has just been found
Termite work is quoted after the inspection. The scope depends on the construction, the extent of the activity and the treatment chosen, and it is not the kind of job that can be honestly priced over the phone. There is an outline of what drives the figure in the cost of termite treatment in Sydney.
I had both pest control and termite inspection carried in by Mason and Mac. They were both punctual on time, provided detailed explanation on what they will do. Mac is genuine and patiently answered all our questions. We appreciate your work, definitely recommend!
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Found mud tubes or a pile of wings
Do not disturb them. Book an inspection and have the activity located properly before anything is opened up or sprayed. Sydney-wide, seven days, with same-day attendance available.
Full details on the treatment options are on our Sydney termite treatment page.
Common questions
So do subterranean termites produce droppings at all
They do, but you will not see them as a pile. The waste is mixed with soil and saliva and built into mud tubes and gallery linings. The mud you find is, in part, the droppings.
I found small pellets under a piece of furniture; what is it
In a Sydney home it is far more likely to be a wood-boring beetle, sawdust from a previous repair, or debris from another insect than drywood termite frass. Borer dust is finer and more powdery than termite pellets. It is worth having identified rather than assumed, because borers and termites need different treatment.
Are mud tubes always active?
No. Colonies abandon routes. Breaking a short section and checking it a few days later is the standard field test, but an abandoned tube still proves termites have been on the property, and the colony may simply be working elsewhere in the same building.
I only found wings, no other signs; does that matter
Yes. Wings mean a mature colony flew, and a mature colony is generally several years old. Whether it is in your building or the property behind you is exactly what an inspection is for.
Can I treat termites myself once I find them?
No, and attempting it usually makes things worse. Spraying the visible workings disperses the colony into other parts of the structure and destroys the evidence a technician needs to locate it. More on that in the early signs of a termite infestation.