Termites, arguably the most insidious and destructive pests for property owners, have been going after your homes for years – that’s the bad news. However, the good news is Ridpest, the proven termite eliminator, has an innovative termite baiting system that lets you go after their home – the colony. Colony elimination is a revolutionary way to deal with termites. And the Ridpest Innovative Termite Baiting System (RIBS) has been proven to achieve it.

The Ridpest Innovative Termite Baiting System protects structures from subterranean termites because it eliminates the colony, while being non-disruptive and non-intrusive to your home and landscaping. The Ridpest Innovative Termite Baiting System is a long-term protection against termite damage.

The Ridpest Innovative Termite Baiting System takes advantage of the social nature and behaviour of subterranean termites which constantly forage far and wide, looking for wood to feed the colony. When worker termites find food, such as the wooden monitoring device in a baiting station, they leave special scent trails to summon their nest mates to the food source.

When a Ridpest’s Termite Field Inspector (TFI) discovers termites feeding in a station, the monitoring devices is replaced with a special device containing termite bait which is a cellulose matrix favoured by termites that is impregnated with a slow-acting toxic chemical. The active ingredient, which is an insert growth regulator, stops the moulting process so that termites cannot grow.

Worker termites feed on the bait and transfer it by grooming or a process known as trophallaxis to other colony members. The active ingredient used in Ridpest Innovative Termite Baiting System acts slow enough to allow foragers to recruit large number of other termites to it. The slow action enhances transfer of toxicant to other termites, including those that never fed on the bait, through trophallaxis. This mutual exchange of food between termites – which is carried out by certain social insects such as ants, fire ants, bees or wasps – food and pheromones are exchanged among colony members.

They regurgitate the bait contents back to the other termites in the colony, including the queen which is the prime target. In this manner, the baits are spread throughout the targeted colony. Without this natural process known as trophallaxis, the bait cannot penetrate the termite colony. In time, all the termites in the colony will be affected by the bait and die.

The bait formulation is highly palatable and this enhances the feeding by the termites, even in the presence of other food sources. As the toxicant is non-repellent, the termites that feed on the bait will not be repelled and will continue feeding on it as they do not know that they are being slowly poisoned

The Ridpest Innovative Termite Baiting System is backed by numerous researches and studies carried out both locally and overseas. Professor Nan-Yao Su and Rudolf H. Scheffrahn pioneered the studies in 1988 using a triple mark-capture technique. Triple mark-recapture programmes using dye markers revealed that a single subterranean termite colony may contain millions of foragers and may forage a distance of up to 300 feet.
Population studies for field colonies of subterranean termites indicated that wooden stakes placed near a large colony of these cryptic insects are eventually attacked by termites. Slow-acting and non-repellent toxicant was incorporated into such food sources to affect the vast population of the subterranean termite colony.

Through an extensive laboratory screening programme, Professor Nan and Scheffrahn discovered that a chitin synthesis inhibitor which is similarly used in Ridpest Innovative Termite Baiting System, interfered with the moulting process of both Formosan subterranean termite, Coptotermes formosanus, and the eastern subterranean termite, Reticulitermes flavipes.

A baiting procedure that incorporated a matrix containing the toxicant was evaluated against field colonies of the Formosan and eastern subterranean termites. Wooden stakes were first driven into soil to detect the presence of termites. Bait tubes were placed in the soil where termites were detected. The results demonstrated that approximately 4mg to 1,500mg (less than 1/20 oz.) of the toxicant was needed for 90% to 100% reduction of field populations containing half a million to 2.8 million eastern subterranean termites per colony, 1 million to 2.4 million Formosan subterranean termites per colony. Elimination of colony populations created a zone of termite-free soil surrounding a home for several years.

Following the success of the initial field trials, a prototype monitoring and baiting station was designed for commercial application. The station containing the monitoring device was first installed in soil surrounding a home. When termites were found in the station, the monitoring device was replaced with a tube containing bait laced with a minute amount of the toxicant. Termites collected from the monitoring device are dislodged into an empty space on the top of the tube, called the “recruiter’s chamber.”

Termites placed in the recruiter’s chamber had to feed their way out of the bait to reunite with nest mates. Left behind in the bait were their species- and colony-specific odours. One of such chemicals is the trail-following pheromone excreted from the sternal gland, which guides nest mates to the bait. This self-recruitment procedure enhances bait uptake by termites.

The toxicant used insects only when they moult every one to two months. During this period, the bait is thoroughly distributed throughout the colony populations. Field trials using the system typically required less than one gram (0.04 oz.) of the toxicant to eliminate field populations of several million termites.

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