01/23/07 Dealing with Wood Pests

Wood Pests. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Keeping warm in the winter is not a problem as long as you have a nice stockpile of firewood ready to toss on the fire. But Ed Bechinski, integrated pest management specialist for University of Idaho Extension says you're likely to bring in some unwanted guests&or pests. BECHINSKI: Basically two categories of insects that one might encounter in firewood, there are the immature stages of those insects that were present in the tree before it was ever cut down and then there are those that were just looking for a place to spend the winter and climbed into the stacked firewood. So you get all bundled up, grab your axe and head for the woodpile. BECHINSKI: Something that falls out that will typically grab people's attention are the larval stages of some pretty big beetles as well as some specialized kinds of wasps. I have one sitting in a jar of alcohol on my desk here right now. You have to imagine a sort of a thumb sized insect larva, feeding in the wood as a larva, poses no harm other than freaking you out if it should crawl out of the firewood into your house. Besides theses overly large larval insects you can encounter, Bechinski says there is another group out there in the wood pile just waiting to surprise us. BECHINSKI: So there is sort of a secondary category of insects and their relatives that were looking for a place to spend the winter. Wasps partially of concern (but) I'd be more concerned about the spiders that may have crawled into the wood piles especially hobo spiders and the black widow spiders. Those would potentially pose a threat to health but I would tell people just use some common sense and knock the firewood off before you bring it inside and any insects or spiders or scorpions or anything else that was present there trying to look for a place to spend the winter, just dislodge them and don't bring them into the house. One thing Bechinski cautions against is the use of any sort of pesticide. BECHINSKI: No one ever treat firewood with any sort of insecticide and then to burn that because the fire could easily vaporize the material, you'd have this presence in your house and poses an immediate threat to you, a long term contamination so that's just not a very good practice at all. There is one other way to take care of those uninvited pests& BECHINSKI: Find some of those big larvae, skewer them on your barbeque skewers and roast them and enjoy them as a tasty snack. I think I'll stick to marshmallows. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.