Worm holes in stored wood

[rustcutter]

I have been digging into the wood pile in the shed and come across some with large worm holes about 4mm, I split open a couple to find the holes go into the wood and there is larvae in the tunnels, however most of the activity is just under the bark where the tunneling spreads to more like area mining and all voids full of dust. Trying to evaluate the extent I realised that basically the logs are from a dead plum tree that I pulled out of a garden in 2020. The larvae are about 13 to 17mm long, white, segmented with a dark mouth. A close match when searched for something like that is on a U.S. site referring to Plum and Prune Shothole Borer; do we have them here? Are they a massive problem for my other logs? as they don't look good for sale, will they just stay in those particular logs. Any thoughts?

 

[GarethM]

Try wood wasp if you're in the UK.

[ABtrees]

There's only several 100s (1000s) of wood boring beetle to choose from !

Did you manage to take some pics that you can post to narrow it down a bit?

There's a number of extremely knowledgeable people on here who may be able to ID them. 

As a general  guide the larvae won't change logs - they will just keep munching until they pupate - that's when your problems could start !   While the larval stage can last anything from 1 year to 7+years, there's only one thing on the beetle's mind when it emerges - procreation !

A lot of adults are happy to walk to find a suitable egg laying site, but most if not all are able to fly and happy to cover several hundred metres to do so.  With one female able to lay 200+ eggs, that's when infestation follows - said from bitter experience - good old Deathwatch !  

After all of that doom and gloom, they're really fascinating to study (but not while they eat your house !) - have a look on the old iggly thread for some pics !

[ABtrees]

12 minutes ago, GarethM said:

Try wood wasp if you're in the UK.

Yeah good alternative call 

 

[Mesterh]

Worm holes you say?

 

Check out this guy, he knows a thing or two about worm holes.

 

neil degrasse tyson

 

 

[Macpherson]

2 hours ago, Mesterh said:

Worm holes you say?

 

Check out this guy, he knows a thing or two about worm holes.

 

neil degrasse tyson

 

 

 

At least he thinks he does🙄

[Patrick goulding]

There not stag beetle long horn beetle one of them types took a big ash tree down a few weeks back and it was full of the larvae 🐛 and beetles 🪲 👍 

[Patrick goulding]

[Steven P]

If your burning it this season, then no problems, they go up in smoke. If they are mature to come out to breed then that will happen in the spring, however if you bring logs in the house for any length of time they might think spring has cone early.

[Mesterh]

18 hours ago, Macpherson said:

 

At least he thinks he does🙄

Well I doubt anyone can speak from experience.