Tree people - holes in pine trees?

Blaze

Blaze

The Jeeper Reaper
Joined
Aug 9, 2005
Location
Wake Forest, NC
So when I got home fromt work yesterday I noticed this with the pine trees in my yard. I am not sure when it started, but definitely noticed it yesterday. I looked around and every pine tree in the front yard is like this, and some in the woods that border my front yard on both sides. These are big mature pine trees that are probably between 2-3' in diameter.

The hardwoods were untouched, only the pine trees had these. Some of the bark was also ripped off and lying on the ground. They are all different sizes and have no patterns. Most of them are within 2' of the base but there are a few that go up around 5'.

Anyone know what they are, and do I need to worry about these trees dying and crushing my house and killing my family? :lol:
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They seem to be green still, they are like 100' in the air though. :lol:

I'm not seeing any sap like somethng is boring in, and there is definitely bark ripped off. My first thought was woodpecker, but they have to be trying to eat something so wondering what is in the tree.
 
Unfortunately X2 on thinking it's Pine Beetles. It's unlikely that woodpeckers would work that close to the ground due to most of their natural predators are ground dwellers? You know there's a group of Wildlife personnel whose jobs are devoted to recording the invasion of Pine Beetles in NC. I unfortunately had a fender bender with one but we had a very interesting conversation waiting on the police. You may consider contacting Wildlife Management about this if it is indeed???

I've been dreading this since I moved here close to 20 years ago. As a boy scout, we planted hundreds of pine trees around my home town (Fall Branch TN). Last time I was up for Thanksgiving, I couldn't account for a single one still living. And as many pine tree forests there are down here, and from how much of our building products that come from pines, the outcome will soon eventually become devastating. :(
Get used to using compressed products...
 
If you google PB's there's alot of info. And you can probably determine if it is indeed by peeling the bark back and looking for their trails. Check out Google Images.

But I hope your problem is from Handicap Woodpeckers??? That can be solved with cats.
 
My parents had this happen to several pines and the guy that removed them said it was pine beetles.
 
mommucked said:
When it warms up, you'll hear them munching on the trees, rip rip rip rip........... continuously.
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That's annoying as hell. I've been around a lot of downed pines on my property and have never seen one of the bastards but I sure have heard them.
 
Blaze said:
Man, they are killing ALL the trees in my yard then. I looked at at least 10 trees in my front yard and every one of them is like this.
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I've personally seen pine beetle infestation take out 10-15 acres of a planted pine stand and not leave a single tree. 10 is nothing.

What kind of pines are they?

If they are legitimately 100' tall they are almost assuredly long leafs and you ahve a small fortune in saw timber there (possibly as much as $2,000 a stump based on 36" DBH and 100' height.)
 
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Ron said:
I've personally seen pine beetle infestation take out 10-15 acres of a planted pine stand and not leave a single tree. 10 is nothing.

What kind of pines are they?

If they are legitimately 100' tall they are almost assuredly long leafs and you ahve a small fortune in saw timber there (possibly as much as $2,000 a stump based on 36" DBH and 100' height.)
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Pretty sure they are longleafs. They might not be quite 100', but they are pretty big mature pines. Here is an old pic of the front of my yard, this is probably 3 years old from the previous owners when we bought the house. You can see 4 of them in the front yard, there are maybe 4-5 more in the bordering woods right there in the front and I have another 5-6 in the backyard and probably another 5-6 in the woods surrounding the backyard. I'm sitting on 1.5 acres and a lot of it is hardwood, but it does have big pines mixed in.

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if you picked up a needle approxximately how long is it?
 
I see a lot of hardwoods on the land around you, Ive always wondered why builders leave the pines when clearing a lot. I see it a lot down here in S.Charlotte. I'd rather have some short oaks than some really tall pines. GL with your trees though. Id look into having those removed even if they weren't infested....
 
Yeah, me either. I am not a fan of pine trees, love hardwoods. There are some really nice big hardwoods in the woods around the house, and the front yard has three of them, backyard has a good 4-5 hardwoods.

Can't really afford to drop all the trees for right now (I have one that is an immediate need, as it is infested and also annoyingly in my way when I back my trailer down to the shop behind the house) but may drop a couple of the worst ones if I can afford it, just to keep things safe.
 
I hate loblolly pine trees. At our old house, it was almost all pines in the front corner of the property. We had about 5-10 of them fall down in a wind storm the first year I was in our old house. Then lost another 7 of them in an ice storm one year. The odd one or two would also fall during thunderstorms. I cut about 60-70 of them down myself over a few year period, so I got pretty good at it. The guy across the street was just opening up an LCID, so it was perfect. I dumped all the logs at his place, and burned all of the branches. The biggest one I took down though was just a hair over 20", because the 20" bar on my saw disappeared in the lower section cuts. We planted a bunch of Maples, a River Birch, a holly, and a bunch of bushes. It looked much better afterwards. I left all the small hardwoods that were growing between the pines. They grew and filled out substantially in the following few years since they were no longer shaded by the pines, and competing for the moisture. We've got pines mixed in with hardwoods in one section of our new lot. I have already started cutting a few of them down. I plan to cut several down every winter for many years to come until they are all gone, or I get too old to safely run a chainsaw.
 
There are sometimes specialized loggers who will take them down at a reduced cost because they can sell the lumber, but good luck finding them. It will destroy your yard and you'll still have massive stumps to deal with. There is no cure for the pine beetles. Actually the best thing to so is to cut them down and burn them to help reduce their spread.
Call the county agriculture agent for recommendations and also look at the NC State website for helpful info. You never know, there could be some type of grant to help get rid of them so they dont spread.
 
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