What bug is causing this?

[wannabegreener]

HI,

I got what I thought was a decent free scrounge - between 4 and 6 cords of tree length pine delivered to my yard for free. It is now all cut up and I have some kind of pest eating it. I can hear the bugs chewing the wood. Anyway, like I said, it is all pine and the picture here shows what they are producing. Any idea what is causing this and if so, how do I get rid of it. I will probably only burn about 1-1.5 cords of pine during the shoulder season, so this 4-6 cords may last me 3 -5 years, if the bugs don't destroy it first.

I have it all cut to stove length and I still need to split, but wanted to know if it is worth all of the work to split it.

I'm having a heck of a time trying to upload a picture. It just says that upload failed. I resized it down to 57K and I have been able to upload a file that was 122K, so I'll try again later.

For now... The wast looks like wood slices abut 1/64 x 1/64 x 1/2 inch. It is a pile of them as if they are being eaten/stripped from the log above. Never on the most top log, it is always on a log immediately under another log. I'll try to upload when I get home tonight.

Thanks

 

[burnagain]

I'm not sure what the bugs are but I was introduced to them when my wife and I moved down to GA. I had never dealt with pine previously only hardwood. When I first heard the chewing I thought i was crazy because I kept hearing sounds in the piles but couldn't find anything.

Anyway, The bugs will go away once it's split and stacked. I try to knock off as much bark when splitting as possible, I'm fairly certain the pine eaters we are hearing are eating directly under the bark. You can see pathways when you peel it back, but the wood itself will have almost no damage.

 

[wannabegreener]

asw

I'm not sure what the bugs are but I was introduced to them when my wife and I moved down to GA. I had never dealt with pine previously only hardwood. When I first heard the chewing I thought i was crazy because I kept hearing sounds in the piles but couldn't find anything.

Anyway, The bugs will go away once it's split and stacked. I try to knock off as much bark when splitting as possible, I'm fairly certain the pine eaters we are hearing are eating directly under the bark. You can see pathways when you peel it back, but the wood itself will have almost no damage.

Awesome. Thanks for the quick reply. I have not stripped any bark of, but I can do that tonight and possibly grab another picture (that I won't be able to upload) . I can't see any damage, no big holes or anything. Kind of weird based on how much shavings/sawdust I see.

 

[blujacket]

It is crazy when you first hear bugs chewing away at your stacks. I have piles of sawdust in my Mulberry & Locust from the Locust Borers. Thankfully mine are gone after this hot and dry weather.

 

[DanCorcoran]

In Colorado, our pinon (small pines) were decimated by the Ips beetle, also known as the pine bark beetle. They were very tiny (like a 1/8" long pencil lead), but we could hear them in the woods chomping away. I doubt that you have the same beetle, but may be a relative.

 

[clemsonfor]

Sawyer bettles. Thats what they are here in the south and im sure you have them where you are as well. You hear them "chewing" on the wood and they are a pine related species, ie there not gonna chew on your oaks. The trees they attack are dead trees that still have moisture and i guess some nutritional value to the larvae that they are going to lay in the cambium layer of the tree that will then hatch. Sont worry they wont get in your house or anything.

I may be off on the life cycle as well as where they actually lay then hatch and where they feed to etc. I am a foreter, but not a forest entomologist. My area of expertise is cutting it down and selling it. If its already dead with sawyer bettles its of little use to me, and i really dont care what killed the trees as thats not my area, we folks who take care of that.

 

[bogydave]

I have a bug that eats just under the bark on the spruce here. I see little piles of sawdust when I get some off the stacks.
Seem to only last for the summer & not return after winter.
Can't hear them chewing, but I can't hear very well anyway.

For some pictures, make sure the pic file is a "jpeg" file. I put pics on desktop, "save as", them change it to "jpeg", then "save"
Then they upload to the site OK.

 

[wannabegreener]

Still can't upload a picture, but after looking up both the pine bark beetle and the sawyer beetle, I think it is the sawyer beetle. The waste from the sawyer beetle looks identical. I also had some of the long horn types of beetles on the trees when they were delivered. I didn't think much of them.

I'll be removing as much bark as possible when I start to split. Hopefully this weekend.

Thanks for the help. If I can upload a pic when I get home, I will.

 

[basod]

Most likely the sawyer beetle.
The larve are white colored and somewhat flat. Don't worry about getting them out, they will help debark you pine.
I would be concerned if you have pines on your own property, especially if your in a drought area right now.
The pine tree's natural resistance to these is pumping sap into the wounds and drowning/sticking them in place. In drought conditions the bugs can overtake even mature trees. If you see brown/yellow needles at the end of branches the beetles have likely killed the tree, I have 2 that are dying currently, and one that will be coming down as soon as the heat breaks.

 

[Pat53]

Yup, we call them saw beetles here. They love chewing in just about any kind of softwood, especially pine. But for some strange reason I have not seen, or should I say heard, any this season. I took down 3 big red pines last winter and had them milled this spring and piled up the slabs to cut up for kindling. So far, not a sound from that pile. 2 years ago I did the same thing and they were "sawing" in those slabs all summer long. The ones around here do not attack live trees, only downed trees with the bark still attatched. And they do not bother milled wood either.

 

[mn_jon]

we have long horned beetles in norther Minnesota. The do not tunnel all over under the bark like the pine beetle. They drill straight into the wood and wait to hatch. Anyways, they don't bother anything. Most of them fall out when the wood is split and the birds eat them. I've heard they're good for bait as well. It freaked me out at first because you can hear the chewing (sqeaking) in all of the white spruce I've cut down. Hope this helps.

 

[clemsonfor]

You

Most likely the sawyer beetle.
The larve are white colored and somewhat flat. Don't worry about getting them out, they will help debark you pine.
I would be concerned if you have pines on your own property, especially if your in a drought area right now.
The pine tree's natural resistance to these is pumping sap into the wounds and drowning/sticking them in place. In drought conditions the bugs can overtake even mature trees. If you see brown/yellow needles at the end of branches the beetles have likely killed the tree, I have 2 that are dying currently, and one that will be coming down as soon as the heat breaks.

Your describing pine bark beetles, which there are 2 species, moutain pine and southern pine beetle. Also know as pine beetles. Sawyers attack dead trees. Pine beetles attack living trees and do as you say. Pine beetles leve resin wells. They look like little volcanos of resin on the tree up to a height of about 20 ft. A pine beetle is about the size of a grain of rice a sawyer is bigger. You sometimes see the beetle in the wells if they were "pitched out".

Reason i am correcting you, or saying this, is in the lay world (not saying your a lay person but some that read this even if not members will be) every beetle in a pine tree or on a dead on is a "pine beetle" and we have to "cut all the trees" or there "all gonna die" or they "got pine beetles". There is also a black turpintine beetle which makes resin wells but there 3-5x the size of real pine beetle wells. Black turpentines do not kill a tree, but do only attack already streesed trees so it may "appear" that they killed them cause to most its the only sigh on what was "a healthy tree". They often ignore logging damge near them, root damage from flooding or soil compaction from traffic or digging a ditch near them and cutting off half the roots, or ignore drought, all which are stress factors.

These are true in the souther US where i am a forester, your results may vary by region and bug species!


BogyDave, you could have power post beetles, they get in my wood, but with out pics i just guessing, totally?