Australia is well-known for its diverse range of pests that can make life difficult, including wood-boring insects that can damage your valuable furniture or even compromise the structural integrity of your home.
Recognising a wood borer infestation is crucial. After all, you wouldn’t want your floor to give way or lose a cherished piece of furniture, would you?
You’ve come to the right place! This article will cover what these pests are, how to identify different wood borer species, the damage they cause, and how to handle an infestation.
So, let’s dive right in.
Examining Wood-Boring Pests
Wood borers are beetles that spend most of their lives eating and burrowing through wood. There are numerous unique types of wood-boring beetles in Australia, some are merely annoying, while others can be highly destructive.
The life cycle of a wood borer starts when a female beetle lays eggs, usually on or inside the wood, such as in cracks or old borer tunnels. Once the larvae hatch, they quickly burrow into the wood, where they spend their time chewing on the wood and digging tunnels. This stage of a wood borer’s life is the most damaging and can last for years.
When the larvae mature into beetles and are ready to leave the wood, they dig an exit hole on the surface and fly away. Often, this is the first time you’ll become aware of their presence. Unfortunately, by this point, it’s often too late, and the wood is already damaged.
While the wooden structures of older homes and antique furniture are often targeted, each wood-boring beetle species is unique and has a different preferred diet. This means that you’ll see a specific wood borer species attacking only certain types of wood.
Termites vs. Wood Borers
It’s easy to mix up termites and wood borers if all you see is a piece of wood riddled with holes, and it’s important to know the difference between them. Both termites and wood-boring insects enjoy feasting on the wooden furnishings and structures of our homes. However, they are not related in any way (other than their choice of food).
As previously mentioned, wood borers are beetles, and they cause damage when they are in their larval stage.
In contrast, termites are small, ant-like insects. They have delicate bodies and are almost white. Despite often being mistakenly called “white ants” due to their appearance, they are more closely related to cockroaches.
Unlike wood-boring beetles, termites typically build their nests outside of people’s homes. They also require favorable soil conditions and an accessible entry point to attack a structure.
Identifying Wood Borers
As mentioned earlier, you’ll likely only discover a woodworm infestation once the worms have matured into beetles and left the wood. Knowing about wood borer identification can help you locate the source of infestation if you notice a few beetles in your house (especially if you’ve noticed holes in your furniture). Additionally, it’s important to quickly identify the source of the infestation because you can save the wood if you do.
Without further delay, here’s how to identify wood borers in your home:
Common Furniture Beetle
The common furniture beetle is the most common type of borer in Australia. It is brown and oval and ranges from 2.7 to 4.5 mm. After it has matured and is ready to leave the furniture, it creates 1 – 2 mm wide exit holes.
Common furniture beetles enjoy softwood like pine, but as they aren’t picky eaters, they could also attack hardwood. They commonly thrive in damp environments like cellars and wooden floors.
Queensland Pine Beetle
An adult Queensland pine beetle, which is native to southeast Queensland, is 1.5 mm wide and 3 mm long. It has a round, reddish-brown exterior that is shiny and hairy. Their exit openings are 2 mm in diameter, and their legs are tightly folded against their bodies.
This kind of wood-boring beetle mainly attacks the sapwood of hoop pine trees and wooden building structures, including walls, floors, and furniture. Old homes and other wooden structures sustain substantial harm from Queensland pine beetles because they keep infesting them until they are destroyed.
Powderpost Beetle
Powderpost beetles have the potential to eventually transform infested wood into powder, as their name suggests. The adult size of this wood-boring beetle is 3 to 19 mm, and the diameter of its exit holes is 0.8 to 3.2 mm. They mainly target hard and soft wood with high starch content. Although they frequently attack timber items like flooring, furniture, tools, decorative items, etc., they rarely cause severe structural damage.
European House Borer
This wood-boring pest is sometimes known as a longhorn beetle or an old house borer. Its size ranges from 8 to 20 mm, and the exit holes it leaves behind are 6 to 10 mm broad when it goes. Due to its fur, this beetle appears grey, but it is actually either black or brown. Their antennae and legs might occasionally be reddish. They enjoy eating fir, softwood, spruce, and pine sapwood.
Due to their liking of high resin content, they frequently target newer homes, but they also attack older homes, and the damage there is significantly worse than that of newer homes.
Lesser Auger Beetle
This beetle, notorious for being difficult to identify and a significant annoyance to owners, enjoys munching on wood with a high starch and sapwood content, whether it be a house or a piece of furniture. Its long, cylindrical body is 6 to 13 mm long and 2 to 3.5 mm in width. They are brown-black or reddish-brown, with a shiny exterior.
Identifying Borer Damage
After identifying types of borer, the next logical step would be learning how to identify borer damage. Unfortunately, these signs only become apparent after the larvae have already destroyed your wooden items.
Exit Holes – You will detect newly formed oval or round holes on the surface of the infected furniture if you have a recent or continuous infestation in your home.
Frass – Borer dust, commonly referred to as frass, results from larvae continuously gnawing on your wood. However, you would only see the frass once the beetle had already left, taking it with them.
Crumbling and Damaged Furniture – The corners would deteriorate due to borer infestations in wooden furniture and dwelling buildings. Therefore, you should have your home inspected for a borer infestation if you discover that your wooden furniture is breaking suddenly.
Damaged Floorboards – If borer-infested, your flooring and timber floorboards would feel and appear spongy, fragile, and damaged. There are other indications that an infestation has occurred. However, they are less frequent or more elusive. Which are:
Tunnels – Galleries are another name for the tunnels that borers create. They are hard to see, though, and you probably won’t see them until you open the item first.
Beetle Eggs – The eggs are typically quite difficult to notice with the naked eye. If you think there might be an infestation, you should use a magnifying lens to examine the wood more closely.
Adult Beetles – Although uncommon, you might see one or two live adult beetles wandering around your house or dead ones near the infested wood, doors, or windows.
Larva – You will rarely find wood borer larvae in your home because they spend the entirety of their larval development within the wood. However, if you want to keep a lookout in case one escapes, most of them are round, curved, and white or cream in colour.
Dealing With Wood Borer Infestation
If a wood borer infestation is allowed to persist, severe structural damage could happen. You’ll want to deal with it as soon as possible, so here’s how to get rid of borers.
Determine the Type of Infestation Effective treatment depends on accurate identification. Identifying whether the infestation is active or not is the first step. To achieve this, keep an eye out for wood powder close to the infected items. If the powder is white and doesn’t clump together, there might still be larvae. However, clumpy, yellow powder shows that the larvae have grown up and moved away from the infected items.
Choose the Right Type of Treatment If the infestation is persistent, you will need to treat the infected item and use insecticide if you are dealing with adult beetles. You will need to replace the contaminated object or properly seal it if the infection is not active.
If the furniture is yours, you can choose whether or not to get rid of it. Infected housing structures should be evaluated for significant damage and replaced to ensure the safety of your loved ones.
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