Powder Post Beetles....

[chad101]

Almost all of my wood is Ash and infested w/ powder post beetles. I'm finding the larvae in rounds (just split today – 10/23/10) that I cut last June for the 2011/2012 heating season.

My seasoned splits are peppered w/ pin sized holes. When I re-split them, I'm finding hundreds of intricate tunnels full of saw dust. Some of my splits (less than a year old) are almost gone.

I'm looking for a "green" and chemical free method to control these pests

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Chad, if it is powder post beetles, you have nothing to fear. All you'll get is some piles of very fine sawdust within the stack. We have them all the time and simply do not worry about them. They attack the elm even worse than the ash. Actually, ash is one they seem to attack very little here.

For what its worth, we have some ash that has been in the stack 6 or 7 years that we are burning now. I don't think even one piece has been attacked by powder post beetles. On the elm, it is a different story. So I wonder if it is the PPB that you have?

 

[benjamin]

If they're really bugging you...

You might work on getting the wood to dry faster, or cutting at a different time of year when it will dry enough before they're active.

Probably completely impractical solutions.

 

[johnsopi]

they burn fine

 

[velvetfoot]

I have to study their life cycle too. The unpainted window frames in the garage got a fair number of holes from ppbs flies that hatched from the wood I had put up rather early. Spraying some insecticide on the windows caused the death of a number of the flying insects. I've since sprayed and filled the holes and painted the windows. I'm thinking that it would have been better to put up the wood after they hatch, but then they'd probably already been burying into the wood in the pile? I'm going to have to do some more reading.

 

[firefighterjake]

I get a lot of the PPB in my ash as well . . . but I don't worry about it . . . a little bit of that fine sawdust to deal with . . . but hey . . . they've got to eat too.

 

[pen]

This is a good lesson for folks who don't allow ash to season or make a mistake their first year of burning and try to let the wood season in the basement. If they filled their basement w/ that before it's truly seasoned, they'd have hundreds of thousands of them in thier basement window sills!

Just ask me about it

pen

 

[velvetfoot]

pen,
Were your window frames painted? I'm hoping that and maybe a little spraying around the windows as well as stacking later in the year might help.