I decided to do some cleaning/organizing of one of my wood pile areas which has several pallets of Honey Locust that was CSS around late winter/early spring 2013. That first summer it was CSS I noticed that something was boring holes in the wood leaving piles of sawdust all over. I had always heard the borers would go away when the wood dried, and they did, so I wasn't too worried about it. Well I started loading this stack into one of my mobile racks today and holy cow there was a lot of saw dust! I imagine it had to be holding some moisture as this stack was not top covered the best. The wood looks, feels, and sounds dry but I'm sure knocking the dust off and re-stacking in the racks for a while will dry it a lil more. Locust being Locust I saw no rot at all. Something interesting I noticed was that only the un-split rounds were chewed up at all...which leads me to believe that the lil buggers do only go after the wet wood, because I'm sure the split stuff started drying right away, where the rounds took a bit longer. Before... After. Notice all the holes!
Yup - the ants will skeedaddle once it's off the ground, and the borers will leave once it gets too dry. But if it gets really dry, watch out for the wood bees! It's a constant battle... They don't contain much moisture though... Bonus BTUs!
Something else that leaves a lot of sawdust is the powder post beetles. It is said that they too only attack wet wood and that is not true! We've had them get inside of barn and grainy and get into shovel handles and fork handles. One time I tried to use post hole diggers (nasty) and the first time I tried to get a load out of the hole, I had a handle in my hand. Those tiny little holes all over the handles. Now if this holds true for other beetles or not I do not know.
They got into my hickory too when I brought it home , havn't seen any new sawdust last year or this though
I haven't seen any bees in the stacks yet...but they have been chewin on my wood shed rafters! I first noticed them when I was working on a carburetor nearby...I follerd him to his hole (can of carburetor cleaner in hand) waited until he went in, then I made sure his carburetor was good n clean! A few days later I seen a couple more going into the same holes...this time I had a can of that spray sealer stuff (Flex Seal) in my hand...yup, sealed 'im up nice n tight! I've seen (heard) a couple fly by this summer, but never seen any actually landing...they lucky, cuz I was gonna try some "Brake Kleen" on 'em this time
When I noticed the piles of sawdust (looked just like yours there HDRock ) I also noticed you could actually hear them munching away when it was quiet enough. I was curious what kind of critter this was so I split some rounds up until I found one. Here's his mug shot... Always wish I had chickens around when I bust open a round that is full of ants...they'd probably like these guys too!
x2 on the chickens... My sister has one that thinks it's a dog... It stays on their porch mostly and starts to brawk at you when you come up the driveway. Then it's got to come greet you and smell your feet - it's hilarious. That looks consistent with locust borer - though a lot of grubs all tend look the same to me. The Locust Borer - FIDL
I had a goat like that growing up...would follow you around all day...he'd (well, "it") would greet you with a sniff of your butt. Yeah your pic there is exactly what made this mess, I seen 'em around in all 3 stages...not lately though
