BATON ROUGE - Pest control experts say they've had hundreds, if not thousands of calls about swarming termites in the last week. Swarming termites were spotted right around Mother's Day and will continue to swarm until July.

Chances are, if you have seen termites swarming around lights around your home, there are colonies of termites creeping in the area. Current problem areas include the 70810 and 70817 areas of Baton Rouge, Central, Denham Springs and Ascension Parish.

"They're all swarming for that light, looking to start a new colony," Arrow Pest Control operations manager Jacob Cohn said.

While swarming termites might be daunting, they aren't the ones that cause the damage.

"You have the workers, those are the ones that cause the damage," Cohn said. "You have soldiers, those are the ones that protect the colony."

A colony is made up of anywhere from 500,000 to 10 million termites. They swarm to reproduce and create a new colony. Those termites that don't reproduce often die.

The termites many see now are called Formosan and are very aggressive. Thriving on moisture, looking for cracked stucco, windows or a roof leak.

"We have a lot of cracked slabs, a lot of pipes that they can just come up in your house and start eating." Cohn explains.

Many colonies can eat a pound of wood a day.

If you suspect an issue is brewing, pest control recommends looking around for moisture areas and to call a professional to get your home inspected.