You know the scene. It rained all afternoon, the evening is still and warm, and suddenly the porch light is swarmed by hundreds of flying insects — and by morning there’s a carpet of tiny wings under the lamp. Most people call them flying ants and sweep up. Here’s the thing worth knowing: they’re usually not ants at all. They’re winged termites — kelkatu — and where they came from matters a lot more than the fact that they showed up. This guide covers how to tell termites from flying ants, when swarm season hits in Malaysia, what a swarm actually means for your house, and why reaching for the spray is the wrong first move.

Termites or flying ants — how do you tell?

Both termites and ants send out winged reproductives — called alates — to fly off, mate, and start new colonies. That’s why they look so similar at a glance. But up close, or in a photo on your phone, three features give it away every time.

The wings are the easiest tell. Termite wings snap off within hours, which is why you find those little piles of equal-length wings on the window sill the next morning — the ants’ wings, by contrast, stay put. If you’re not certain, snap a clear photo before you sweep up; it’s all a technician needs to identify what you’ve got. There’s a fuller breakdown in our guide to white ants vs termites.

When is termite swarm season in Malaysia?

Because Malaysia is warm and humid the whole year round, there’s no single “termite month” the way cooler countries have one spring swarm. Termites here can fly at almost any time. What triggers the big swarms is a specific combination: a warm, still, humid evening that follows a good downpour. That’s when a mature colony releases its alates all at once.

In practice that means swarms cluster around the rainier stretches — the monsoon and the inter-monsoon transitions — and they tend to happen at dusk. The alates are powerfully drawn to light, which is why your porch lamp, kitchen window and the petrol station down the road all get swarmed on the same evening. It’s a brief event: a heavy swarm can be over in an hour, leaving the wings behind as the only evidence.

What does a swarm mean for your house?

This is the part that actually matters, and it comes down to one question: where did they come from?

A swarm emerging from inside the house — pouring out of a crack in the wall, a skirting board, a door frame or the ceiling — is a warning. It means a mature colony has set up somewhere in or under your structure and is now big enough to send out reproductives. That’s the version to take seriously.

A swarm that flew in from outside — through an open window or door, toward your light — may have come from a neighbour’s tree, an old stump, or the soil in the garden, and isn’t automatically proof of a colony in your walls. Alates are weak flyers drawn to any light, so a handful indoors on a swarm evening isn’t the same as a nest.

The tell that cuts through the doubt is shed wings indoors. If you find a pile of wings on an inside window sill, on the floor by a wall, or around a light fitting, termites emerged in that room — and that’s worth checking properly. It’s one of the early signs we flag in where termites hide.