Termite Swarms in Bangalore

Yesterday evening, we watched this sudden termite swarm in Indira Nagar…

We saw the termites flying in their hundreds, around the street lamps:

I tried to get them against the light, but only got this image:

Nabeel Mohamed, another person intrigued by the swarming, was trying to capture the image of the termites coming out of the ground on his mobile phone camera:

You can see the hundreds of non-winged grubs as well if you look closely:

Karthik had told me about these termites, so I decided to look it up on the net, and here’s some info about termite swarms:

one

two

and three

Pity that such a lovely sight actually means…destructive pests! These termites are called "eeshal" in Tamizh, and Shashidhar Bellur (NTP) informs me that they are called "geddalu" or "gejjalu" in Kannada.

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