# Blue stained pines.



## beastmaster (Apr 13, 2017)

I curious why the mills won't take blue stained bug trees. Were taking out hundreds of pondorosas and the trees are sent to a site and turned to chips. Granted most are already dead but their still sound. Seems like such a waste.


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## 2dogs (Apr 13, 2017)

Several years ago blue stain was all the rage for making kitchen cabinets. Prior to that and now I guess the wood goes either to co-gen plants (a dirty word here in California) or to mulch or worse yet to the landfill. Yes, a waste.


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## Jhenderson (Apr 13, 2017)

The stain is really a form of mold. It feeds on the sugar in the pine sap. It weakens the wood anywhere the stain is. There are undoubtedly borer holes in the dead pine as well. There's little market for the amount of low grade that those trees are going to produce. All that is before you consider bringing the bug filled logs into a log and lumber yard. It's a looser any way you look at it.


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## beastmaster (Apr 13, 2017)

Makes sence. Thanks.


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## 1270d (Apr 13, 2017)

I panelled a house in blue stained pine once. It turned out kind of cool although not my cup of tea. The home owner actually paid a premium for what he was told was a rare species called Western blue pine. He was a bit bothered when he was told what it was.


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## Westboastfaller (Apr 13, 2017)

Economically, it obviously just doesn't work. Either the price isn't there or the demand isn't there. Perhaps they would have to comply with a gov contract which would bring a lot of scrutiny to assure they remain in compliance with controlling the bark beetle with said contract or subject to fines and supply isn't there to make it worth their while.

There was a market I believe it was Japan some years ago with the Y2s ( year 2; after the bugs had flown) also with infested ones here.
Loggers also didn't have to pay stumpage fees so they would log behind the mass epidemic that went through BC and over the rockies. Instead of in front for a long time. The good pine price was so low and with stumpage fees it wasn't forth it.
It helped the spread from the main hwy towns/citys

They did eventually log the good stuff like crazy here and sold it at a low price to the US under the softwood lumber agreement. I believe they made it worth it for the loggers to go after the good stuff then they wouldn't log the bug wood because the price was about the same. At one point the price of Diesel was do high vs the price of good pine they couldn't afford to log. Running two peices of Iron and a $13,000 fuel bill a month. The SWLA is now expired over a year but until it is settled again chances are they can buy slow growing interior pine up here still for cheap. The good news for the people it affected down there is it/,we diminished 16 million hectares in BC
That's 2.471 acres per Ha. 40 million acres. Next time the prices will be much higher we simply don't have the supply and the epidemic is over so we won't be giving it away next time.

Good for the 'American logger, ,bad for the consumer I would think.





The male and female will only live a year although they have reacently discovered a strain that is said to live two if it has bark protection) They always do the control work before the larva matures and fly's.
(July here they fly to a new host tree.)Here we burn the trees on site in the winter. At the least the bark has to be burnt 100%. They live under the bark and the larva feeds off the cambium layer of the tree circling the tree as they grow, killing the tree.
If you chip them they can't survive.


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## northmanlogging (Apr 13, 2017)

1270d said:


> I panelled a house in blue stained pine once. It turned out kind of cool although not my cup of tea. The home owner actually paid a premium for what he was told was a rare species called Western blue pine. He was a bit bothered when he was told what it was.



I've heard tale of an enterprising old crook around these parts, that would cut up truck loads of Cotton wood (black popular) into fire wood, than take it into the big city and sell it as "High Mountain Alder" selling basically a large wheelbarrow full as a "condo" cord fer $80...

Its all in the labeling.


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## old CB (Apr 16, 2017)

Here in Colorado the blue-stained bark beetle killed wood is popular. A guy was showing me the inside walls of his cabin--all blue-stained wood. He was so proud. Doesn't do much for me, but it's popular here. I guess it's all in the marketing.


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## madhatte (Apr 17, 2017)

Jhenderson said:


> The stain is really a form of mold. It feeds on the sugar in the pine sap. It weakens the wood anywhere the stain is. There are undoubtedly borer holes in the dead pine as well.



That's close to the whole picture. The stain is indeed a fungus, but it's a wood-decay fungus that mostly affects sapwood. It is carried on the mouthpieces of the bark beetles, which deposit it as they bore in to get to the cambium, which sits at the interface between bark and wood. After the beetles are gone, the fungus remains, spreading mycelial material into the wood from its point of origin. If you look at the end of a blue-stained round, you can see the way it spreads, and also infer the location of the beetle that deposited it.


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## M.R. (Apr 17, 2017)

[ATTAC
56F sticks in this one's mind as when the fungus becomes active.

.
=full]573426[/ATTACH]


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## madhatte (Apr 17, 2017)

You can pretty much assume that each individual blue patch corresponds to a single beetle's entry into that tree. Oddly, the beetles individually don't kill the tree -- rather, the larval galleries, when they overlap because of a large attack, girdles the tree, such that it is the girdling rather than the beetle that is tha actual mechanism of mortality. You can see from the picture below how they would overlap.


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## M.R. (Apr 17, 2017)

Last few years with our weather pattern cycle here, we've been seeing patches of
Rust coming in....weaking or making them more accessible to the bettle & taking the blame.
Timber like farming lol ... the more one learns or comes to terms with...
Might get to thinking of another bussines...
or capitalizing on it some how.
If I managed for mistletoe solely in this stand
Wouldn't be a whole lot left.
.


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## madhatte (Apr 17, 2017)

M.R. said:


> If I managed for mistletoe solely in this stand
> Wouldn't be a whole lot left.



We ran into the same problem with laminated root rot a few years ago and adopted a different prescription. Gotta roll with changes!


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## Westboastfaller (Apr 17, 2017)

Good picture of the "J" shape gallery the female makes. She will start at the bottom end then turn 180° and finish at the top. The male will pack it down and push it out. It creates the pitch tube at the entrance hole. Referred to as a hit. (I believe in Regions of Alberta the prober has to count 40 hits now or they leave it be ) Then you have pitch outs. Usually a purple resin at the entrance hole that drowns the biotch. Sometimes the tree can win.
I know a fair bit about MPB, 
Back in the day we didn't have probing contracts and ticketed probers for fall & burn. It was 'search and destroyed' with chainsaw in hand and we only had to burn a metre past the last gallery we could see by looking at the and of the last block as you describe.
Admittedly, I knew nothing about the early stages of sap rot disease, the stain and how It came to be until now. I can detect heart rot & sap rot disease in later stages from outer fungus's on species I deal with OK. Some can be confusing, its an ongoing practice.
Sapwood fungus is that white 'matt like' growing generally on one side of the base. once that's present its definitely in the danger tree stage.

So I read up on the fungus. It spores and colonizes quickly, Its sticky spores blocks the water and nutrients and the resin's stop flowing. The article I read was a study of the USDA. They were able to test the beetles success rate without the fungus and they concluded they wouldn't have been able to be of any great threat alone. The trees defence of resin flow was to much ending up in 'pitch outs'. As they went on to say "its a deadly combination but what I was told about the larvae killing the tree sounds to be false, which doesn't surprise me as its an overlap and not a true girdle of the cambium. Small trees anyway, can live with a sliver of cambium in tact. The fungus also acts as a food source for larvae & Beetles as the flow quickly stops. I can't remember the word they use in English but the translation from Latin ment 'living with' 
One can't exist without the other.
The disease could kill by it self but the beetle ..not so much.


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## madhatte (Apr 17, 2017)

Westboastfaller said:


> I can't remember the word they use in English but the translation from Latin ment 'living with'
> One can't exist without the other..



I think you're looking for "Commensalism". 

Also, I'm about 90% sure that the pouch fungus Cryptoporus volvatus that we all use to identify recently-dead trees is a secondary follower of the beetles, unrelated to the stain except by vector. I'm pretty sure that it's a decay fungus only and not a pathogen.


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## Westboastfaller (Apr 17, 2017)

M.R. said:


> Last few years with our weather pattern cycle here, we've been seeing patches of
> Rust coming in....weaking or making them more accessible to the bettle & taking the blame.
> Timber like farming lol ... the more one learns or comes to terms with...
> Might get to thinking of another bussines...
> ...


 Mistletoe, Western gull rust & bark beetle. Sounds like you can't miss. I think I would have an easy solution.
Where do you go from there?


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## M.R. (Apr 17, 2017)

Pine wise getting the slash burnt to help keep the IPS in check..
Where the Spruce Budworm came thru hard a couple + decades back and grazed the tops of many of the D. Fir to a slow death...Trying to firewood the dead tops & mill whats left as time permits.

Off topic a bit... pictured around 25% of
the largest colony of Lady Bugs I've ever
Encountered. ...


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## thomasjf (Apr 17, 2017)

I trimmed for a contractor working the front range west of Loveland, Colorado. He purchased beadle kill to use for interior trim/accents. Mostly 8x8 beams and 4x12s. Rough cut. It was not rated for structural then. (early 80s). And while the blue is pretty when fresh cut, it soon fades away when exposed to light. Even under a finish coat of clear.


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## old CB (Apr 18, 2017)

Entire mountain sides have been devastated by bark beetles in Western Colorado, and a few years back everyone was on edge here on the front range because it was thought that our area was next in line.

A few years ago an elderly woman up the road called me and said, "I have a pine tree with 23 hits" (these would be the pitch tubes where a beetle enters) "I need you to take the tree down." She was nearly frantic. I explained that in our work I don't do anything without coming to scope the job first and discuss with the customer.

"Oh, there's 23 hits--I counted them--it needs to come down. Just tell me how much, and I'll leave the money in the mailbox." I said I don't work like that.

I went up there and found that the pygmy nuthatches had pecked holes in her siding, got into the yellow fiberglass insulation, and poked bits of insulation into 23 locations on her very healthy pine tree. No need to cut anything at her place.


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## madhatte (Apr 18, 2017)

M.R. said:


> Off topic a bit... pictured around 25% of
> the largest colony of Lady Bugs I've ever
> Encountered. ...



That is a LOT of ladybugs! They usually cluster like that over winter in sheltered places and then disperse in the spring. I get them in my attic every couple of years but nothing like that.


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## CabinFever (Apr 18, 2017)

I always wondered why some of the paneling we used in our one-room cabin had blue staining. We like it.


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## chucker (Apr 18, 2017)

looks great in the north country hey... !"WELCOME TO THE SITE " ...


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## CabinFever (Apr 18, 2017)

chucker said:


> looks great in the north country hey... !"WELCOME TO THE SITE " ...


Ya sure, ubettcha, neighbor!


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## Westboastfaller (Apr 18, 2017)

madhatte said:


> I think you're looking for "Commensalism".
> 
> Also, I'm about 90% sure that the pouch fungus Cryptoporus volvatus that we all use to identify recently-dead trees is a secondary follower of the beetles, unrelated to the stain except by vector. I'm pretty sure that it's a decay fungus only and not a pathogen.


 Right I follow you now. I was scratching my head for a while. Yes, it's a sapwood decay fungus and indicator of sapwood disease or sapwood decay. In the case of northern interior pine, you may not see its presence for 3 yrs or so. I do recall seeing it on interior spruce that was killed from heart rot disease as the base is full of heart rot conks, at that point you can often push the stub over. Not really much for assessing on the coast. Although WCB says I can leave certain ones on the boundries as a licensed Danger Tree Assessor (DTA) ,superiors want them cut. So you have to adhere to the highest standard. All the skills go out the window and I don't seem to observe like I would by tbe book. I would definitely attest to what would be a late onset in the dry belt regions can happen quickly in a wet belt.


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## madhatte (Apr 19, 2017)

We often see beetle hits along prairie margins in dry seasons where the pouch fungus follows less than a year later. Away from the prairie margins it seems to take longer. I suspect that this timing has to do more with dessication due to sun exposure than anything else.


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## flying pig (Apr 27, 2017)

The stain can be very pretty at times. There's a patch up here where the trees have tons of colours in them like this one. When oiled the blue stain turns black.


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## Jhenderson (Apr 27, 2017)

Unfortunately you're ignoring the fact that the fungus actually weakens the wood. The grain opens and softens. It will dry rot in half the time.


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