Since single pieces of dead wood can not sustain a very large family, their colonies rarely ever number more than a few thousand termites. These wood inhabiting termites have a primitive type of caste system. Instead of having true workers they have false workers which are older nymphs who have undergone a regressive molt and that temporarily stay in the nest galleries and help their parents to raise more brothers and sisters. The soldiers have enlarged orange heads and long toothed jaws. The soldier's main purpose is to defend the colony from termite's mortal enemies, the ants.
Most nymphs gradually grow wing pads and then transform into winged termites called alates.
The alates fly from the colony at a certain time of the year to start new colonies. Among the wood inhabiting termites, there are various specialists such as rotten wood termites, damp wood termites and dry wood termites. Dry wood termites can be very serious pests of houses and furniture. All wood inhabiting termites produced fecal pellets. If you have dry wood termites in your house you are likely to see the coarse sand-like pellets long before you discover the termites themselves.