The most common question I get about Sentricon is some version of “does that thing actually work?” The short answer is yes — it’s the most effective termite colony elimination technology available. Here’s how it actually works, without the marketing language.

The Core Problem With Traditional Liquid Termite Treatment

To understand why Sentricon was developed, you need to understand what liquid termiticide treatment actually does — and doesn’t do.

Traditional liquid treatment involves injecting termiticide into the soil around your home’s foundation, creating a chemical barrier. Termites that contact the barrier are killed. This works, with limitations: the barrier can have gaps, it degrades over time, and it doesn’t address the colony. It’s a defensive perimeter, not a colony elimination strategy. The queen keeps laying eggs; workers keep foraging. If they find a gap, they’re in.

How Sentricon Works: Colony Elimination from the Inside

Sentricon works on a fundamentally different principle. Instead of blocking termites, it uses their own behavior against them.

Station placement: Sentricon stations are installed in the ground around your home’s perimeter, spaced according to the manufacturer’s protocol. The stations contain Recruit® HD termite bait — a matrix that is actually more attractive to termites than most wood.

Discovery and feeding: Eastern subterranean termites — Oklahoma’s primary species — forage continuously through the soil, exploring in random patterns. When workers encounter a Sentricon station, they feed on the Recruit bait preferentially over wood. Importantly, they mark the food source with pheromones, recruiting additional workers.

Colony transfer: Workers return to the colony and share the bait through trophallaxis — the direct exchange of fluids that is how termites feed each other, including the queen and reproductives. The active ingredient (noviflumuron) is distributed throughout the colony this way.

Colony collapse: Noviflumuron is a chitin synthesis inhibitor — it disrupts the molting process that termites use to grow. Affected termites cannot successfully molt to the next stage and die. As the bait spreads through the colony, the worker population declines, the queen’s egg-laying is disrupted, and the colony collapses over 3-6 months. There is no abrupt die-off; the colony gradually stops functioning.

Why Sentricon is Environmentally Superior

Sentricon is the only termite control product to have received the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The active ingredient targets a physiological process specific to insects that molt — it has no known effect on mammals, birds, fish, or plants. There’s no broad-spectrum soil application, no groundwater concern, and no disruption to your landscaping.

The bait is enclosed inside tamper-resistant stations installed flush with the ground. Children and pets cannot access the active ingredient through normal outdoor activity.

Always Active Technology

Sentricon with Always Active technology contains Recruit bait in the station from day one — not just a monitoring device that requires bait to be added after termite activity is detected. This means any termite that encounters a station immediately begins feeding on the bait. There’s no lag between detection and treatment.

What It Means to Be a Certified Sentricon Specialist

Sentricon is not available through general pest supply channels. It can only be installed and serviced by pest control companies that have received Corteva Agriscience’s Certified Sentricon Specialist training. Murray Pest Control is one of the only Certified Sentricon Specialists in central Oklahoma — serving Stillwater, Edmond, and Payne County.

As a Certified Specialist, I receive ongoing training, direct technical support, and access to the full Sentricon product line. This is what separates a Sentricon program from a competitor’s generic bait station product.

Learn more about the Sentricon System. | Termite control in Stillwater. | Termite control in Edmond.

Jake Murray is the owner of Murray Pest Control and holds a B.S. in Entomology from Oklahoma State University. Murray Pest Control is a Certified Sentricon Specialist® serving Stillwater, Edmond, and Payne County, Oklahoma.