Cliff Sadof, Entomologist
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| White Pine Weevil Damage (Click on image to view larger image) |
White pine weevils were fairly abundant in the summer of 2000. The weevils cause the upper most shoots of white pines to curl into an S-shape or shepherd's crook. The injury can be distinguished from Zimmerman pine moth in that there is no accumulation of gummy sap at the junction of the tree branches in the main stem.
Background information:
Genus and species: White pine weevil, Pissodes strobi (Peck) (20)
Order and Family: Coleoptera: Curculionidae
Hosts: Pines, especially white pine, Norway, and Colorado Blue Spruce.
Damage and Diagnosis: Infested trees have the leader curled into a shape that resembles a shepherd's crook. Lateral branches from the infested tree's first whorl may also be curled. The top two to 3 years of growth can be affected. In early summer, legless (1/4") white c-shaped grubs can be found in stems, beneath the bark surface or in the stem.
Biology: Adults winter in leaf litter and fly to tree tops to mate when the weather warms in the spring. Females lay many eggs in terminals that hatch into grubs that bore into shoots. Legless larvae continue to feed until July when they pupate in chip bark cocoons. Adults emerge in August and chew on twigs.
Control: Prune and destroy damaged leaders that contain larvae or chip bark cocoons before adults emerge. Applications of insecticide (check with your local nursery or county extension office for pesticides that can be used) to tree tops should be timed to kill adults gathering on twigs in early spring (April), or adults feeding on twigs in August. Mixed species plantings of pines are less likely to build damaging numbers of this pest than pure stands of susceptible species.
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Plant and Pest Digital Library and Digitally Assisted Diagnosis, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana.