Wood Borer Control

Do you see white powder in your wooden cupboards and drawers everyday, which comes back the very next day even if you clean it? If yes, then most likely you have a problem of borer.

Powder Post Beetle is commonly called Wood Borer. They are very destructive and reduce precious wood into dust.

Wood Borers are about 4mm long and dark brown to black in colour. They spend their life in wood. And thus they live in their food.

They lay eggs in cracks/pores in wood. Life cycle of the insect is unlike animals or human beings. The egg hatch to become larva, then pupa and finally the adult. The larva starts eating voraciously on wood thereby making tunnels inside wood. The powder or dust falling from the holes in the wood is the excreta of the borers and undigested cellulose of wood.

The adults finally emerge by making tiny pin size holes.

The life cycle of woodborers is about one year.

Wood in your premises can get infested by cross infestation i.e. from wood infested by woodborers, brought from outside. The infestation generally remains hidden for a long time without giving any indication of its presence. It is noticed after completion of one generation, after the excreta starts falling from the holes.

The Wood Borers are controlled by injecting the insecticides in the holes with a syringe. The entire wood is also sprayed with insecticide.
For Wood Borers a contract of three months is generally sufficient. After initial major treatment, we come on call i.e. whenever you see powder falling again, please call us. In most cases, three months treatment is enough. If the infestation is not controlled by three months, it will be necessary to enter into one year’s contract.

Three groups of wood-boring beetles—powderpost, deathwatch, and false powderpost invade and damage wood furniture as well as structural and decorative wood inside of buildings. The beetle larvae feed in and do most of the damage to wood, and when they reach the adult stage, they emerge through round exit holes, which they create by chewing through the wood surface. Adults of some species also bore exit holes through plaster, plastic, and even soft metals that might cover the underlying wood.
You might see other wood-boring beetles such as flatheaded or roundheaded borers and bark or ambrosia beetles in your home if you store infested firewood inside. However, these typically are forest insects that won’t attack wood structures or furniture. They begin their life cycles on declining trees that are old or that have sustained fire or insect damage. Sometimes these forest insects are present in trees when they are milled into wood products, and they might cause alarm when they emerge from infested wood used in newly constructed buildings. However, they aren’t able to reinfest the wood in these structures. Certain species of wood wasps also might emerge from infested wood used in new structures. See Pest

Notes: Wood Wasps and Horntails for more information. Invasive woodboring insects often arrive as hitchhikers from other continents on solid wood packing material such as pallets or in a ship’s dunnage, and some of the key beetle pests of wood in structures have likely established worldwide distributions this way.

IDENTIFICATION AND LIFE CYCLES

Powderpost Beetles

A subfamily of beetles in the family Bostrichidae (formerly referred to as the family Lyctidae) are known as powderpost beetles, because larvae create a fine, dustlike powdered frass (a mixture of feces and wood fragments) that has the consistency of baking flour or talcum powder. This boring dust is packed into the larval galleries (feeding channels) in the wood but occasionally falls out of exit holes into small piles on floors or other surfaces.
This fine, powdery frass distinguishes powderpost beetles from other wood-boring beetles in homes. It also differs from the larger, granular, and almost pepperlike pellets drywood termites leave behind; if you look closely at termite pellets, you will see they have ridges on their sides.
Powderpost beetles attack hardwoods, apparently because these woods have pores into which they can lay eggs; softwoods don’t have such pores. The large pores in bamboo also make it a favored host material for powderpost beetles. In addition to large pore size, powderpost beetles also prefer wood with high starch content; the starch content in softwoods is nutritionally low for these beetles. They will attack wood that is very dry and that has a moisture content as low as 8%.
Adult powderpost beetles most often select and lay eggs in wood such as oak, ash, hickory, mahogany, and walnut, and infestations are most likely to occur in wood paneling, molding, flooring, window and door frames, plywood, bamboo articles, and furniture. Infestations can occur if beetles or larvae are brought into a building in furniture, firewood, or wooden decorative articles.
Sometimes the only sign of infestation is the tiny, round exit holes made by the emerging adult beetles. Once they emerge, the winged adults spread to other wood surfaces where they deposit eggs onto unfinished surfaces or in cracks or other openings. They also tend to fly toward light, so you’ll typically find dead adults on windowsills after they have tried to disperse.
They have a life cycle ranging from 3 months to more than 1 year, depending on temperature, humidity, and the nutritional quality of the wood. Adult powderpost beetles usually are shades of brown to red. Species frequently encountered in California structures include the old world lyctus beetle, Lyctus brunneus; the southern lyctus beetle, Lyctus planicollis; and the western lyctus beetle, Lyctus cavicollis.