Wood damaging pests can attack expensive antiques and even a building’s structural components. Knowing the type of wood boring beetles involved can help determine the most effective control methods.

House longhorn beetle

Hylotrupes bajulus

Appearance

• Adult beetle is 8 – 25mm in length.
• Black/brown colour with greyish hairs and 2 black spots on thorax which resemble eyes.

Lifecycle

• Larvae tunnel between 3 to 11 years before emerging.

Habits

• Flight holes between 3mm and 7mm.
• Infests seasoned and partly seasoned softwoods; pine, spruce and fir most susceptible.
• It is frequently timbers used in the roof space that are infested.
• Damage can often be severe in timbers around the chimney area. The larvae produce large amounts of bore-dust (or frass) containing cylindrical pellets. Sometimes this is visible in the ‘blistered’ appearance of the surface wood.
• Longhorn beetles will fly freely in hot, sunny weather which enables them to spread an infestation from one building to the next.

Powder post beetle

(Lyctus brunneus)

Appearance

• Adult beetle is flattened and elongated with 1–7 mm in length. 
• Reddish to dark brown in colour. 
• Larva is white in colour, slightly curved and can measure up to 5mm when fully developed. 
• Newly hatched larva is straight, extremely slender and less than 1 mm long.

Lifecycle

Adult lives 1–3 months.

Under favourable condition, it takes 9–12 months to fully develop. 

Habits

• Usually attacks wood that is dry, untreated with chemicals and rich in starch, namely Rubberwood, Ramin, Jelutong, Penarahan, Merbau and Kempas.

Wood boring weevil

Appearance

• Adults are 2.5 to 5mm in length.
• The weevils are reddish brown to black. They have a long snout, a cylindrical body and short legs.
• The larvae are a creamy white C-shaped, wrinkled and legless

Lifecycle

• Adults are 2.5 to 5mm in length.
• The weevils are reddish brown to black. They have a long snout, a cylindrical body and short legs.
• The larvae are a creamy white C-shaped, wrinkled and legless

Habits

• Damage is associated with damp and decaying wood, particularly timber already rotted by cellar fungus. Infestations can spread to adjacent healthy wood.

Common furniture beetle

Anobium punctatum

Appearance

• Adult beetle is 3 – 4mm in length.

Lifecycle

• Larva will live for 3 – 5 years boring through timber before emerging to breed.

Habits

• They actively fly in warm sunny weather.
• Within homes and other buildings the furniture beetle is an exceedingly common pest.
• Despite its name this beetle can invade more than just furniture.
• Infestations can damage decorative woodwork, musical instruments, wooden tools and on a more serious scale wood flooring, joinery and structural timbers.
• These wood boring beetles consume hardwoods and softwoods.

Wharfborer

NACERDES MALAMURA

Appearance

• 7–14mm in length.
• Yellow brown with tips of elytra (wing case) black.
• 3 ridges along the length of the elytra.

Lifecycle

• Eggs are laid on damp, decaying timber.
• Larvae bore through wood for about 9 months then emerge in Summer

Habits

• Larvae require wood to be constantly wetted so that fungi break down the wood fibres.
• Two main sources of infestation in buildings — structural timbers where rainwater leakage occurs, and pieces of timber buried below concrete foundations, paths and pedestrian precincts