A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2005 A question about WDO's and goodbye to my tree

I had to have one of my live oaks cut down today. It had been looking sickly since I've owned this house, but it was still alive, so I let it be, even though the trunk was only about a foot and a half from the house. A few days ago, it dropped a huge branch that narrowly missed the house, so I decided it was time for this guy to go.

One of the things I had noticed before about this tree, and that concerned me that I should probably have it taken down was that there was a hole in the side of it, and part of the tree was pretty hollowed out.

Anyway, I had the tree guys cut the tree up into firewood for me, and I was just stacking the wood when I came across the section that was hollowed out. Inside it, I found this "dirt" with these "worms" in it. Are these some larval stage of a wood destroying organism? I guess they're not termite larvae, but since this tree was so close to my house, do I need to worry about the roof?

Anyway, here are the critters:



What do you think?

I also saw some weird looking things on the outside of some of these logs, they looked like grasshoppers (long legs) with coloring and markings that looked more like a bee. Any idea what those could have been? If I see any more I will get a picture of them.

They're probably a borer, feeding on the new layers of the tree, under the bark. Your house is not threatened by these critters as they eat growing wood. They tend to attack sick, weak or damaged trees. Or they are some other larvae there for much the same reasons. Maybe eating the rotting wood. They'd be good fishbait though i'll bet. Dunno what the other critters could have been. Reindeer larvae maybe?

What did you do with the wood, and bugs Boxmonkey?
Just wondering???

Those look very much like fungus gnat lavae. If so, nothing to worry about.