I vacuum this up every few months and it keeps reappearing. What type of bug is living in this wood and should I be worried?
This dirt seems like the bug's poop or something
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2 Answers
Looks like dry wood termite droppings (frass) or pellets to me.
Google termite droppings and you’ll see many pictures.
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1It looks serious. You can see it extends up the post quite aways. If it’s very serious you will be able to stick a screwdriver into the wood quite far (more than 1” or so). If so, it could be in the floor boards too. Don’t wait. Have it checked soon.– Lee SamCommented Jan 22, 2020 at 6:31
I'm fairly sure it's termites. They are soft-bodied, so they don't like to be exposed to the air, as they dehydrate, so they typically stay within the wood, and eat away at the softer spring growth rings in softer woods including pine. When they run short of material they'll explore for more, and to do so, they build tunnels along the surface that protects themselves.
They're unlikely to touch your hardwood flooring, but they're probably in the floorboards and joists underneath. The main colony will be underground, and will have passage through either hollowed-out wood or tunnels up to the point that you see them.
This requires professional treatment, until the colony is destroyed, they'll keep coming back.
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Note that termites, carpenter ants, etc. don't/can't eat healthy dry wood. They need the moisture for survival. So this sort of damage almost certainly indicates that there is some additional process going on, like a water leak or condensation behind the wall that is making the wood wet enough for the insects to damage. Commented Jan 22, 2020 at 17:54
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1It doesn't need to be soaking wet though. Termites ate the framing around a door in my house that was well away from any water source other than what wicked up from the soil in the crawlspace via the likely mass of tunnels they'd built up the supporting piers - it had been treated before I got the house, and I wouldn't have found it were I not moving the door frame's position in the wall.– Phil GCommented Jan 22, 2020 at 19:25
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"It doesn't need to be soaking wet though" -- yes, absolutely true. In fact, it almost never is soaking wet. A really fast leak, enough to get wood soaking wet, generally causes enough problems elsewhere that the homeowner fixes it before insects can get involved. It's the slow leaks that just get the wood moist that are the real problems. And as you note, any contact with moisture is enough for them to get a foothold. If moisture contacts the wood just a little, the damage that insects do there is enough to allow moisture to move incrementally, for them to make further progress over time. Commented Jan 22, 2020 at 19:30
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Does having termites mean you also have a water leak somewhere? Commented Jan 23, 2020 at 7:14