Which pine beetles are actually in Georgia?
Five native species, grouped three ways by the Georgia Forestry Commission.
- Southern pine beetle. The aggressive one. Capable of mass-attacking and killing healthy trees, and the species responsible for the outbreaks that make the news.
- Three species of Ips engraver beetles. Usually secondary, taking trees already weakened by drought, lightning, construction damage or storm injury.
- Black turpentine beetle. Attacks the lower trunk and stumps, often following fresh damage at the base.
All of them are native and all of them are present at low levels all the time. What changes is whether conditions let them build to outbreak numbers.
Why are there so many right now?
Because the numbers have genuinely jumped. The Georgia Forestry Commission documented 273 southern pine beetle spots statewide in 2023, then over 1,600 spots in 2024.
Outbreaks run in cycles and are usually preceded by drought or flooding, both of which stress pines and reduce their ability to defend themselves. A healthy pine pushes attacking beetles back out with resin. A drought-stressed one cannot.
That is why a bad summer shows up as dead pines the following year rather than the same season.
Which pines are most at risk?
Loblolly, shortleaf and Virginia pine are the three most susceptible, which is unfortunate for Northwest Georgia because loblolly is everywhere here.
White, slash and longleaf pines are noticeably more resistant. Dense stands of older pines are at higher risk than scattered open-grown trees, because the beetles move easily from one to the next.
How do you know a pine has beetles?
Work from the trunk upward, then the crown.
- Pitch tubes. Popcorn-sized blobs of resin on the bark where the tree tried to push an attacking beetle back out.
- Boring dust. Fine reddish sawdust caught in bark crevices, in spider webs against the trunk, or piled at the base. This is often the earliest reliable sign.
- Galleries under the bark. Pull a loose piece off and look. Southern pine beetle leaves winding S-shaped tunnels. Ips leave galleries shaped more like an H or a Y.
- Crown color. The needles fade from green to yellow, then to red, then brown.
- Woodpecker activity. Heavy flaking of the bark by birds working a trunk is a strong hint about what is underneath.
One important trap: a tree under serious drought stress may not produce pitch tubes at all, because it has no resin to spare. Their absence does not clear a tree, which is exactly why the other signs matter.
Can an infested pine be saved?
Once the crown has begun to fade, no. By the time the needles turn yellow the beetles have already girdled the tree under the bark, and often they have already left for the next one.
This is the hardest part of the conversation to have, because the tree still looks like a tree. It is standing, it is holding its needles, and it is dead.
What removal buys is the neighbors. Southern pine beetle spots expand outward from an infested tree, so prompt removal of dead and actively infested pines is the standard recommendation for slowing the spread. Leaving them standing gives the next generation a base to work from.
What do we do, and what do we not?
We do not spray or inject. Chemical treatment for bark beetles is licensed pesticide applicator work, and where prevention is genuinely worth considering, for example a high-value pine next to an active spot, that is who should be doing it.
What we do is take the tree down. A dead pine is a specific kind of removal job and not one to put off. The wood dries, the limbs get brittle, and a standing dead pine becomes progressively less predictable to climb and to rig, which is why we would rather take one in autumn than let it stand through a winter of wind.
If it is already leaning or has dropped limbs, that moves into emergency tree service. Otherwise it is straightforward tree removal, and the cost guide covers what drives the number.