Holy Crap, Bugs in the woodpile!

[Hillbill]

I have sawdust in my current woodpile, so I was searching for other's experience and ran accross this site. After reading the thread, I just had to join and give my 2-cents. Look at the pic. These critters are not harmless. The sawdust is over an inch thick in places, all since spring! Okay, facts: wood is 99% hickory. Larvae are same as the two pictures in this thread. They are in all the smaller, unsplit pieces, but are mostly confined to the bark of large rounds. I am separating the small rounds , and splitting the large. Hope that works well enought to save most of the wood for winter. I grew up in the country, and this is the worse problem of this type I have ever seen.

 

[SolarAndWood]

I hope your woodpile isn't near any buildings.

 

[gzecc]

When wood is split it will dry. If its left in rounds it will be a nice place for critters for years. The moisture is the attraction. Split it, elevate it, store it in an open sunny location and the critters will find better digs!

 

[Wood Duck]

I have had some sawdust in my pile, but that is the worst case I have seen. I would try splitting the rounds, since whenever I split I dislodge a few grubs. Maybe you'll have to split small to dislodge most of them, but that would be better than ending up with nothing but sawdust. I have seen grubs in many different species of wood, but apparently hickory is the worst.

 

[Zimm]

Sounds (snydley in your case looks) like painted hickory borer. Do a google search on this and you can get a good pic of the adult. This species mates and lays eggs in the spring on green or only partially dried hickory wood. The trick here is to cut your hickory in the fall and give it plenty of time to dry before the beetles mate in the spring, or if its not too hot in your area cut in mid summer after the mating season. There is a related beetle that infects locust trees that mates in the late summer but I don' think thats what is causing your problem. Good luck. Z

 

[Flatbedford]

I found those white things in Locust that was cut last summer when I split it this spring. I season my wood far from the house. I keep a week or so supply on the front porch after the temp drops in the fall. I figure most of the bugs are dead by then and won't move into the house.

 

[Highbeam]

The bugs in my pile just go to sleep when it gets cold. Then wake up while in the woodstorage hoop in the house. Thus, even a couple of days worth of wood storage is enough to bring the bugs in.

And no, dry wood under cover off the ground will not prevent a bug infestation.

 

[LLigetfa]

And no, dry wood under cover off the ground will not prevent a bug infestation.

Really? Where do you think the bugs get their water to live?

 

[quads]

They're just bugs. Pitch them in the stove with the wood and they will help heat your house when they burn. In the meantime, scoop up some of the sawdust and add it to your kindling. Think of all those holes they bore as ventilation. Helps dry the wood quicker. When burning, the air flows through it resulting in a cleaner burn. It's all good.

 

[andybaker]

I'm with most everybody here - firewood = bugs. When I started it sometimes freaked me out, but I've learned to deal with it. Borers don't bother me at all. Black ants, I won't even take the wood home. I live in the city and am afraid of the house or a neighbors house getting infested. I keep the largest wood pile in this end of town and don't need any trouble from the city. My biggest problem/annoyance is the spiders that hide in the wood. Takes only a couple of hours and they thaw and are on there way. Everyone in the family wonders where all the spiders come from in the winter, I just keep my mouth shut. Best control, don't bring so much in and when it's above freezing don't store too much near the house.

On another note: I'm looking out the bedroom window upstairs out across the freeway and I see the loggers have shown up and started cutting down the woods over there. Aparently it's gona be baseball bats or something. The Ash Borer has killed hundreds of trees over there. I thought I might have a perfect source the next couple of years. My luck!

Andybaker

 

[TreePapa]

This was more "bugs in the wood" than "bugs in the woodpile" ... I split a few more pieces of the pine I scrounged six months ago (most of it is already split, just a few leftovers and odd-shaped pieces waitng for Thumper's attention ... or for me to rent a splitter again).

Anyway, one of the pieces o' pine, 'bout 6 inches round and 18 inches long, had a "stringy" or ragged end. When I split that piece (w/ the super-splitter ax, not Thumper), about two dozen earwigs came running out from inside the wood. More came out when I resplit the splits. I banged the resulting splits together real well to get out as many of the buggers as possible, but I doubt they all came out. Oh well, as others have said, they burn okay.

Peace,
- Sequoia

 

[mn_jon]

actually I think the holes make the wood dry faster There isn't a single piece of pine up here that doesn't have the same type of boring bug in it. They do like wet wood. Trees I cut in the winter were too dry for them in the spring. And I can hear them chewing almost constantly. I believe its a large black beetle. And as far as i can tell, they are completely harmless. They won't touch a pile of 2X4s that are next to the woodpile.



Jon