Pine beetles

[loblolly]

Hello everyone.

I have a modest 10-acre stand of loblolly mixed with pioneering hardwoods (maples, sweetgum, poplar, dogwoods, etc and very small oaks) that I care for as if it's a park (or perhaps "pet" is a better analogy).  I'm guessing it's been 20yrs since the person who lived here before farmed the land, which then grew-up with the trees I have now.  I'd say most are 40ft or better.  I have a fair knowledge of trees and plants in general, but am neither expert nor professional in any fields of study.

I live in Northwest GA near the foot of the appalachians.  The soil is red and yellow and not good for much.  The yearly rainfall exceeds 50 inches and most years produce flooding in winter with drought in summer.  The summer of 2016 was particularly bad in that there was no meaningful rain from June until December.  Coupled with unusually low humidity and typical southern heat, the plants suffered quite a bit.

At first I thought the death of my pines were the usual yearly self-thinning that has been ongoing for the last decade I've been here and possibly exaggerated by the drought, but then realized that healthy trees were dying too fast and I discovered what I'm pretty sure is SPB.  The trees turn brown quickly, the bark falls off, I see 1/16 diameter holes, and s-patterns under the bark.  This area is known for SPB as well and I have a section of hardwood absent of any pine which died en masse around 2000 leaving a big mess.

So, the last couple weeks I've been killing myself trying to cut and burn as fast as I can before the warmer temps hit.  Unfortunately, it's been a warm winter as we saw several 70 degree days in february and I feel I'm already behind.

I've read everything I could find online to the point of repetition, but I've yet to talk to anyone who has had experience in dealing with this.  What I was hoping to do with this thread is condense all information about pine beetles in one spot so the next guy doesn't have to comb the internet piecing together knowledge.  Plus, I have a few more questions of my own.

I'm not sure how to layout what I already have learned and have decided to just let it flow in conversation since I can't speak from a position of authority.  Instead, maybe I'll ask some questions:

- What I need to know most importantly is which trees should be burned first?  Are the trees losing bark too late to bother?  I understand if I can catch the tree in the stage of turning from green to brown, that is a good time to burn, but at what stage is it fruitless?  If the needles are gone, is it too late?  Or are some beetles still in the bark?

- If the bark is gone from the top of a large tree, but the bottom of the tree appears healthy, do the beetles move down the tree or seek new trees?  In other words, should I leave such a tree as bait for the beetles while I tackle other trees that aren't as large nor have a healthy bottom?  I have to budget my time intelligently.

- I've read that "cut and leave" is a strategy that is fairly effective.  I'm guessing that is because the beetles only seek vertical trees, but how will that stop beetles emerging from the horizontal tree?  What is it that I do not understand?

- Is it better to go through the forest dropping all the infected trees and then come back later to clean up and burn?  Or is it better to burn as I cut so as to not disturb the beetles in the bark and cause them to flee to other trees?

- Am I under any obligation to notify anyone?  I'm assuming that if I have this problem, that it's known by the forestry service and I'm not sure I want to lose a day's work showing a guy around when he is powerless to help.  There are no pines in my immediate vicinity, but down the road there are large forests of commercial loblollies.  I haven't checked, but surely they are being affected.  Surely I'm not the only one.

Thanks for your help and hopefully we can make this a very informative thread.

[WDH]

Unfortunately, I have had a lot of experience with the southern pine beetle.  Once the trees have turned yellow or red (the needles), burning them does not help because the infestation wave has moved on.  The only way that we stopped them, and then not always, was to find the last infected tree (needles still green, tree looks healthy, but there are beetle pitch tubes on the bark) and then harvest all trees from that point on for a distance of up to 150 FEET from the last infected tree.  So in effect, you are sacrificing up to a 150 foot perimeter buffer of un-infested trees around the last infected trees which means that you would essentially have to harvest a significant portion of your entire stand.  If the trees are pre-merchantable, i.e. too small to harvest, you pile and burn the trees. 

It is important to know which bark beetle that you have.  Ips beetles will kill 5 - 10 trees and move on to another spot, sometimes not even in the same stand.  You just have to "tolerate" them as cutting a buffer will not have any effect.  Southern pine beetle, on the other hand, can move through a stand like a wave and kill almost all or all the trees, and these are the beetles that you have to consider the buffer to stop.

http://www.gfc.state.ga.us/forest-management/forest-health/pine-bark-beetles/spb-cost-share-program/suppression/index.cfm

http://www.spbinfodirect.ento.vt.edu/Hndbk575/575.html