Do termites bite?
Soldier termites can. Termites are medically harmless to people and animals. What they do to a house is the real problem.
Which termites bite
Worker termites are small, wingless and white to greyish, and they tunnel into wood and feed on it. Soldiers look much like workers but with a large, darker head and well-developed jaws, which they use to defend the colony. Those jaws are what bite.
If one bites you
Wash it with soap and water, and hold ice wrapped in a cloth on it if it hurts. Watch it over the next few days: redness, swelling or pain that keeps growing can mean an infection, and a doctor should see it.
Worker and soldier: which end bites
Bites you never saw happen
Termites live in the soil or inside wood, so itchy bites that appear overnight or in bed are more likely something else. Compare them with bed bug bites and mosquito bites, and if it was a painful sting outdoors, with kagat ng langgam. A sudden, burning bite from something long with many legs, often in a bathroom or under a pot after rain, is a centipede bite.
What matters more: the house
If you found soldiers, you found termites that are active. Look for mud tubes on walls and foundations, and for winged swarmers or their shed wings; more in anay, the Filipino identification page with a real photograph of workers and soldiers, in anay sa bahay and gamu-gamo sa loob ng bahay. Treatment that reaches the colony is on termite control and prevention. We cover Pampanga, Bulacan, Bataan, Tarlac and Olongapo.
Sources
- Texas A&M AgriLife, Field Guide to Common Texas Insects: Termite, read 26 September 2026
- University of California IPM, Subterranean and other termites, read 26 September 2026
- MedlinePlus (US National Library of Medicine), Insect bites and stings, read 26 September 2026
Tell us what you have found
Send the pest, the town and roughly how long it has been going on. That is enough for us to say what the treatment would involve and what it depends on.