Termite swarm in your Long Beach home? What the flying insects mean and how we respond

Stay calm. Swarming termites do not bite or sting, and they do not damage your home during the swarm. They are trying to leave. Close interior doors to keep them in one room, and turn off lights near the swarm if you can, since they fly toward light.

Vacuum up the swarmers and their wings. Before you do, collect a few in a sealed sandwich bag or a small jar. Those samples are valuable for identification. Note the date, time, the room and the exact spot they came from, such as a window frame, a baseboard gap or an outlet.

Do not spray store-bought insecticide into the crack they came from. It will not reach the colony and can make it harder to see the exit point. Do not seal the hole yet either. We want to see where they came out so we can find the colony behind it.

• Save a few swarmers in a sealed bag
• Note the date, time and exit point
• Vacuum the rest and the wings
• Do not spray or seal the exit point

Many swarms in Long Beach homes turn out to be ants, not termites. Argentine ants and other ants also produce winged reproductives that swarm. The difference is easy to see up close. Termites have a straight, thick waist where the body joins. Ants have a narrow, pinched waist. Termite antennae are straight and beaded; ant antennae are bent at an elbow.

Wings are the other clue. Termites have four wings of equal length, often longer than the body, and they shed them easily. Ants have front wings noticeably longer than the back pair, and they hold onto them more firmly. Drywood swarmers in Long Beach are often reddish brown with dark wings. Subterranean swarmers are darker, almost black, with pale wings. A sample in a bag settles the question quickly.

Timing helps too. A swarm of dark insects on a warm spring morning after rain leans subterranean, while reddish swarmers on a hot September afternoon lean drywood.

Termite colonies take years to grow large enough to produce swarmers. A drywood colony may not swarm for several years after it starts. A subterranean colony also needs time to build up enough workers to support reproduction. A swarm inside your home means a colony has been in or under it long enough to mature.

That does not always mean extensive damage, but it does mean the colony has been feeding. A swarm from a window frame usually points to galleries in that frame and possibly the wall framing around it. A swarm from a baseboard or floor near a bathroom often points to subterranean termites coming up from the soil. Either way, a swarm is the colony advertising its location, and acting on it promptly keeps damage limited. Finding the colony after a swarm is usually easier than finding it from pellets alone.

Drywood termites in coastal Long Beach usually swarm on warm, clear afternoons between late summer and fall, often right after a heat spell breaks through the marine layer. Swarms in homes along Ocean Boulevard in Bluff Park, in Belmont Shore cottages and in Alamitos Beach courtyard buildings tend to come from attic framing, window frames and eaves on the sunny side of the building.

Subterranean swarms come earlier, typically February through May, often on a warm day after rain. Raised-foundation homes in California Heights, Rose Park and North Long Beach see spring swarms from crawlspace framing and from cracks near bathrooms where plumbing goes through the floor. In the slab tracts of Los Altos and Lakewood Village, spring swarmers often appear in garages and along slab cracks. Homes near El Dorado Park and the San Gabriel River, with irrigated lawns and mature trees, see both types during the year.