New chemical wipes out 95% of termites without harming humans

Drywood termites are remarkably good at disappearing into the very material they destroy. Instead of building obvious nests, they can spend nearly their entire lives hidden inside beams, framing, furniture, and other dry wood, slowly carving out galleries as a colony grows.

That hidden existence makes them difficult to find and difficult to eliminate. But researchers at the University of California, Riverside identified a biological weakness that termites cannot hide from: they have to molt.

A study published in 2025 in the Journal of Economic Entomology showed that bistrifluron, an insect growth regulator that interferes with the formation of a new exoskeleton, can kill western drywood termites with remarkable efficiency. In controlled laboratory experiments, the chemical produced 95.7 percent mortality when termites had a choice between treated and untreated wood, and about 99 percent mortality when they were continuously exposed to treated wood.