TnAndy
Veteran Member
- Joined
- Aug 9, 2013
- Messages
- 1,993
- Location
- East Tennessee
- Tractor
- Yanmar LX410...IHI 35J excavator Woodmizer LT40
I like white pine as well. Southern Pine beetle kills white pines (don't know if they are an issue in Vermont), but they only damage a small layer just under the bark. They do carry a fungus with them that causes a blue stain to the wood, which lowers it's value for finish lumber, but makes no difference in framing lumber.
The "saw worm" that you often see in white pine as a grub that makes large holes in the wood, is the result of a of an egg laid by some variety (there are several) of long horned beetle.
Fairly ugly looking critter:
The egg hatches to a larvae stage grub that eats pine to Swiss cheese. You can actually hear them crunching away on the logs and see the sawdust being pushed out their holes.
The trick to avoiding this is saw the logs BEFORE the beetle gets a chance to lay the eggs in the bark. They will not lay on lumber, just on whole logs that are downed/dead. The don't attack live trees either. But they will move in on a tree you cut within a few days when they are active. Tree must give off some kind of scent or something they recognize as "cut tree" or "dead tree", because I've cut trees, come back few weeks later to buck into logs, and have found them already eating. Eggs must hatch almost immediately too.
IF you cut pine in the winter, the logs are OK until the weather warms and the beetles are active. Rest of the year, you need to saw, or debark, ASAP to prevent damage. Once the larvae (grub) are in the wood, they will continue to eat (though not as bad as undisturbed logs)....so the trick is to get them sawed BEFORE the beetle lays it's eggs and you'll have no grub damage.
Powder post beetles are another problem, but I've never seen them in pine....they seem to prefer hardwoods like oak/hickory, and often do their damage AFTER the logs are sawed into lumber. The trick to beating them is a high temperature dry kiln fore the damage is done, or it's possible to spray insecticide on lumber stacked for air drying, as well as the ground immediately around it.
