Bug ID Request

[anmbug]

Hi,
My wife found 3 pyramid shaped, neat piles of fine wood...frass...underneath some firewood from last winter we had sitting inside a few feet from the wood stove. I took that single piece of firewood into the garage and with a chisel & hammer took a piece off. And, I discovered a live bug inside. I believe it is a powder post beetle but I am not an expert.

Can one of you confirm the id for me?

And, so the next question is should I be worried since we live in a cedar log home and we are putting up pine T&G over the existing sheetrock?

And, how do I confirm this was the only beetle in this house?

We also hope to put down a red oak engineered floor in the next few months, removing the laminate floor shown under the frass. So, we hope this is the only one.

The floor is 2" of gypcrete with radiant in-floor heat on top of 3/4" T&G subfloor on top of 10" I-joists. The interior walls are standard 2x6 & 2x4 stud walls and the 6" solid cedar classic D-shaped logs are only the exterior logs.

Do these bugs like cedar, or is cedar naturally resistant to bugs? What about the pine T&G and the stud walls?

Thank you for the help.

Attachments:

[prillbug2]

Where do you live? It's important to know this.
Jeff Prill

[anmbug]

New Mexico

anmbug = a new mexico bug

[prillbug2]

Since I don't have the insect in hand, I'm basing it on what I can see from the photograph. Family: Cerambycidae. Subfamily: Aseminae. Tetropium parallelum Casey, 1891. Some of the species do feed on Pinus, Larex, Abies, and Picea, so it is possible that they are feeding on Cedar. Nothing was recorded for this species in The Cerambycidae of North America by E. Gorton Linsley.
Jeff Prill

[bandrow]

Greetings, anmbug,

By any chance are you in the northwestern part of New Mexico?

Bandrow

[anmbug]

Hi,

I am in Central NM, not northwestern, in ABQ.

Jeff, thanks for the help. I take it the common name is powder post beetle, correct?

I will do some more research as I understood cedar was naturally resistant to bugs. The piece of wood I found the beetle in was a single piece of oak firewood given to me by the firewood company to try burning, vs burning only pine. From what I have found so far on the Internet is that powder post beetles like hardwoods, like oak.

[bandrow]

Hi anmbug,

There are many species of wood-boring Coleoptera that utilize cedar as a larval host. The powder-post beetles are actually the family Lyctidae - much smaller beetles with shorter, slightly clubbed antennae. Your beetle is a long-horned beetle.

I sent you a personal message with more detail - looking forward to hearing from you,

Bandrow