Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Press Bulletin No. 60 of the N. C. Geological and Economic Survey: March 9, 1912
The beetles attack and leave a tree in about thirty days or even more quickly. Three or four generations in the North and four or five in the South develop during the season. In other words, they may be increased thousands of times from their original numbers during the year. They ?y during the night, and sometimes in the day, and alight on the upper trunk of a living pine. (observation has shown that they seldom go as far down as the first eight or ten feet of the butt cut, depending, of course, on the size of the tree.) When they alight on a tree they bore through the bark to the wood, but they do not bore into the wood. In the inner bark and marked on the surface of the wood they make those winding galleries with which you are all familiar. These galleries, crossing and recrossing, girdle the tree many times, thus killing it. The eggs are laid along these galleries, hatch into little grubs, which feed for a short time on the inner bark, and then go into the outer bark where they change into beetles with wings. The beetles bore out of the bark to the light, ?y away and attack other trees. They can ?y for three or four miles or more, may go in any direction, and, therefore, are a direct menace to all pine within three or four miles of a center of infestation.
Since they kill and leave a tree in thirty days or even more quickly, you will never find their broods in old dead trees or trees from which the foliage has fallen. You will find many other kinds of beetles in old dead trees, but never this one. You will find this beetle in trees on which the foliage has begun to fade to light green or has faded to yellow or greenish brown. In fact, after November lst, any dying or dead trees which retain their foliage are apt to harbor the hibernating beetles, and in addition they are also found in trees on which the foliage is green but which have pitch tubes on the trunk - these trees fade later.
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