Drywood termites live in dry, sound wood and derive their moisture requirements from the wood they consume. Infestations can occur in structural timbers in buildings, pieces of furniture, flooring, doors and doorframes, window trim, wooden picture frames, and other isolated pieces of wood. Drywood colonies are usually relatively small with a few thousand members (subterranean termite colonies may number in the 10,000’s to even millions). However, a structure may house multiple drywood colonies in the same structure.

Drywood termites do not need a connection to soil. They construct large, irregular tunnels that run across and with the wood grain, connected by openings small enough for one termite to pass through. The sure sign of Drywood termite feeding is their fecal pellets, which are ejected from the galleries found within the damaged wood. These pellets are quite distinctive: they are hard, elongated-ovals with rounded ends, and have six concave sides.