It is ambrosia beetles. They are not going to hurt your other trees. They are already there naturally in your environment anyway. They bore into weak, dying, or recently dead trees. They will leave the wood as it begins to dry. They are in the logs because the moisture content in the logs is still high enough for them to flourish. After you saw the boards, they will leave pretty soon. You will see their little piles of sawdust as they complete their life cycle and bore out.

Your idea of the black plastic bag on the hot concrete will work. That will hasten their departure and demise. The good thing is that they are harmless, and they will not infest any other wood or trees that you have. The good thing is that the black lined holes that they leave create a lot of character in the wood. They bring in a fungus on their body, lay eggs in the chambers that they make. The fungus grows on the chamber walls. The baby larvae feed on the fungus. Pretty simbiotic.

 

I got something similar in my pecan slabs, here in East Texas, holes are usually 1/8th inch or so, but some are close to 1/2" never seen the actual beetle, just their little holes and piles of sawdust.

Once mine are cut down to cutting board size, I put them in the oven at room temp, heat to 225, as soon as it gets to temp, cut it off, and let it cool back to room temp. Seems to be adequate heat to kill the bugs, but doesn't warp or crack the wood.

 

Do the small holes have a slight black ring around them or is the tunnel black lined?

 

I'd say that the tunnel is black lined. I'm going to try putting into a trash bag this morning put a wireless thermometer/humidity sensor in there and see how it does.

 

Elvis will leave the building.

 

Trash bag is the wrong approach. Use clear plastic. Put the black trash bag on the ground for a little extra "umpf." Actually the best thing to cover with would be (clear) bubble wrap since it is an insulator.

When I have done this I put the logs in the bed of my pickup (with its black liner) and put a clear tarp over it. Does it work? I guess. I mean, I'm not sure, because the wood then goes into an attic where it's pretty hot every day (115+ F). Bugs don't like heat. 130 F (in the wood, so it takes time) is supposed to kill all of them.

 

Soob, I considered that clear plastic would have been better to achieve a higher temp via greenhouse effect but I don't have any clear trash bags on hand ( nor any others use for them). I thought about using some clear plastic drop cloth as well but I wanted a pretty good seal to contain and collect any critters that tried to leave but also to ensure the humidity stayed high to help prevent too rapid drying at this early stage. The temperature/humidity sensor only showed 111° max temp but I struck my infrared sensor in and saw 130°F on the surface of the boards in top layers. Humidity hovered at around 85%. I have 2 bags so I may try transferring contents of 1 bag to clear drop cloth to see the difference for future reference.

Note that temps here didn't hit 100°F yesterday. We only hit a cool 97°.

 

A quick update. I transferred half of the wood to a clear drop cloth just to see the difference on the second day. I rolled up the edges and clamped them to keep the humidity and beetles in. The temperature got warmer but not by much. The biggest difference is that the temperature seemed to be more uniform-not just the top boards hit the high temps. The RH was not as high, though that could have been a problem with my sensor at the mid 130 temps. I kept the wood out in the sun for 3 days and it was noticeably dryer when I brought it back inside. I can't tell if it caused any warping because I didn't do the best job of sawing them straight to begin with but there weren't any addition checks or cracks-just the ones that were there when I collected the logs.

Note that I collected a couple of beetles immediately after taking the wood out of the bag and drop cloth. I put them in a plastic bottle to see if I could identify them. They looked more like bark beetles to me than the beetles typically associated with ambrosia so I'm not sure if these were the ones that actually bored into the wood. I also don't consider this a success at killing the beetles either. The beetles weren't moving when I initially collected them but after they cooled down, I noticed that they were crawling around inside the jar and crawled away when I wasn't looking. These are tough little buggers.

Thanks for your help.

 

I sawed some pine Sunday that was recently dead or dying from bark beetle attack. The ambrosia beetles come in after the bark beetles weaken/kill the tree. Unlike the bark beetles, which only infest the inner bark, the ambrosia beetles bore into the wood and lay eggs. In just three days of air drying, the ambrosia beetles are boring out and leaving the boards. They cannot live in the wood once it begins to dry.