Analysis of HomeGuard's Termite Monitors

for

Speed of Hits

by

C.D. Mampe, PhD.

DM Associates

Sarasota, FL

Objective:

A critical component of any termite monitoring, baiting or trapping system is the time required following installation of the trap to collect live termites.  There are no data for the systems currently available on the market to show that they actually attract termites.  Therefore, termites are required to locate these other systems as they forage and contact the trap on a serendipitous fashion.   In some cases the traps have never intercepted termites even after a period of 24 months.

HomeGuard first began installing the current system in January, 1998.  All properties with this system installed were reviewed and the installation date and the date of the first recorded hit were noted.  A "hit" in this study consisted of several thousand termites in a station.  Other systems consider a "hit" with very few termites in a station.  A small number of these properties had confounding factors such as:

1.  The walls had been drilled and borated for drywood termites which may have influenced the activity of any subterranean termites on the property.

2.  When live termites were located during installation, "hot" traps containing the predator mites were installed which could have reduced or eliminated the termite population immediately.

3.  Some properties purchased the system on a preventive basis even though no subterranean termite activity was ever noted.

4.  Some of the original installations were only inspected each quarter which would skew the data significantly.

Any property having any of the above four factors was excluded from the data base.

Results:

The total number of properties considered in this analysis numbered 91.

The average number of days required between installation and the first hit was 21.3

The least number of days required for a hit was 4.  The greatest number of days required for a hit was 83.

Percentage of Hits for each Time Period

Following  Installation of Traps

Time period in days	No. of hits	Percentage of Total
0 - 7	8	8.8
8 - 14	34	38.2
15 - 21	16	17.2
22 - 30	14	15.2
30 - 60	16	17.2
> 60	3	3.3

Comments:

It should be noted that many installations - especially those made in  1998 and 1999 - were inspected two weeks following installation.  Based on experience on other properties, some hits probably occurred before the two week inspection but would not have been recorded until the 2 week inspection.  If the traps had been inspected every day, one would expect the average time for a hit to be less than one week.

Regardless of whether or not the average number of days required for a hit was 21.3, no other system on the market can compete with this rate.

Respectively submitted by:

_C.D. Mampe___ _______________________       __7/08/01

  C.D. Mampe                                                                 Date