powder post beetles

[pineywoods]

Had a man call me today asking about little black holes in some beams. From what he described it sounds like powder post beetles. Only thing, the beams are cypress. My experience has been that ppb's are mostly a problem in hardwoods, in a few rare instances, I have seen them in real dry pine, but never in cypress. Anybody seen the buggers n cypress ???

[WDH]

If the holes are ringed in black or are a black color on the inside, it is probably ambrosia beetles and not powderpost beetles.  If it is ambrosia beetles, they only attack the wood as the tree is cut or dying, and do not persist after the wood dries out.  There is also usually no sawdust or frass associated with the holes, unlike powderpost beetles.

Hopefully, it is not powderpost beetles  .  The ones that I am too familiar with only attack dry hardwood. 

[SwampDonkey]

Sounds like ambrosia. I had them in my white pine.