Small termites or ants in my rhyzome

[squegeeboo]

First year growing hops, 7/8 all sprouted and were doing great. And then over the past 2 weeks, 1 of them has started to wilt and die, when I took a look initially, I couldn't tell why, but now that I've dug into the soil a bit around it, it looks like the roots/rhyzome have become infested with small white-ish looking ants? Does anyone know about this, and what to do to either save this plant, or more importantly, stop them from spreading to others? (Besides the obvious, rip up this one and destroy it to save the rest)

 

[day_trippr]

I didn't think termites fed on living plant tissue, they're pretty much all about decayed wood.

Do they look like these?

Cheers!

 

[squegeeboo]

That is def. them. I just pulled up that 1 hop plant yesterday and disposed of it. What are they?

EDIT: And I see by the image URL they are termites. So something else killed the plant, and they've just been eating it. Maybe I got root rot or something from all the rain recently?

 

[stp128]

this picture is real?????

 

[Eichler]

Termites will eat some woody vegetable and flower roots so they might eat your hop roots too. Especially the Formosan kind of termites (invasive termite in SE US). They eat anything.