Saturday Morning With Jack Tame

House borer has been with us humans from the day we made our dwellings from dead timber. Before that time, the insects concerned themselves solely with tunnelling into (and recycling) fallen logs in the forests. A very useful occupation, I’d say.Untreated timbers are still perceived by pregnant adult borer beetles as a very suitable fodder for the larvae, especially when there is a wee bit of moisture and yeast around to aid in the digestion of all that cellulose.She will lay her eggs in old nail holes, exit holes, or cracks in the wood, and particularly loves the end grain of a piece of timber. The larvae emerge and bore straight into the wood; their entrance holes are too small to be noticed by a mortal human being.Inside they subsist on a very boring diet for at least two years (if the timber is very suitable) – in some cases they’ll take four years to complete their life cycle. It probably pays to stress the fact that bone-dry and yeast-free (or fungus-free) timbers are not great food sources for these de