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Nope, you are right - my bad. DNA is terse - with only 4 'words' (AGCT) - but it is massively redundant, meaning that most of the 'program' is junk, which is one reason why it still 'compiles' despite mutation.
The answer to your second question is that to begin with, the ants/termites didn't live in such great big structures. But smaller groups of them would have had to live in smaller, cruder arrangements. By accident, some of these ants might be predisposed to building structures with basic holes in their ceilings, allowing for more creatures to live together (and perhaps for those colonies to reproduce more effectively), but still in fairly crude arrangements. Over time, more happy accidents accumulate, allowing for larger and larger colonies, supported by ever more intricate structures. It's really quite straight-forward when you think about it without any bias.
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