Why Pines Die So Fast in Birmingham Yards (and What to Look For)

Every year we get calls from homeowners who say the same thing: “That pine was fine this summer, and now it’s brown.” They are usually right. Pines in central Alabama can go from healthy-looking to dead in a few weeks, and the cause is almost always bark beetles.

Several kinds of small bark beetles attack pines in Alabama – the southern pine beetle and the smaller Ips engraver beetles are the usual suspects. They bore through the bark and dig tunnels in the living layer underneath, which cuts off the tree’s flow of water and food. A healthy pine fights them off with resin. A stressed pine can’t.

And yard pines get stressed easily: a hot, dry summer, roots cut or buried during construction, soil packed down by cars and equipment, lightning, or storm damage. That is why dying pines show up in clusters after dry years and around new construction.

• Needles changing color – first a dull yellow-green, then yellow, then red-brown, often starting at the top.
• Pitch tubes – small blobs of resin, about the size of a piece of popcorn, on the bark where beetles bored in.
• Reddish sawdust in the bark crevices and around the base of the tree.
• Small round holes in the bark, like it was hit with birdshot.
• Woodpeckers working on the trunk – they are after the beetles.
• Bark that comes off easily, with winding tunnels on the inside.

Once a pine has turned yellow or red and has pitch tubes up the trunk, it can’t be saved. The best you can do is protect the pines around it: beetles leave a dying tree to attack the next stressed one, so infested pines should come down promptly and the wood should not be stacked under other pines as firewood.

Healthy pines nearby benefit from a deep watering during long dry spells and from keeping cars and equipment off their roots.

A dead pine dries out fast. Within a year or so the wood gets brittle, the top and the limbs start to break off, and the roots begin to rot. That makes the tree more likely to fall – and more dangerous and expensive to take down, because climbers can’t safely tie into dead wood. Dead pines near a house are often removed with a crane for that reason.

If you have a pine that is turning color, send us a photo or call (205) 871-3617. We will tell you whether it is beetles, and if it has to come down, we take it out before it becomes a bigger job.