Our friend Seri was chainsawing some logs in our driveway yesterday[1], and she turned up these two beetles under the bark of a basswood log[2]. They were each about an inch long, and were initially stunned by the cold, although they got over it quickly enough.

Normally, when you find a beetle under tree bark, it is some variety of bark-borer and a pest species. But, this one looks to be a “False Mealworm” beetle, probably Alobates pennsylvanica. I come to this conclusion based on the size, shape, where it was found, and the rows of small punctures running the length of the wing covers.

The False Mealworm beetles are not a pest species[4]. Far from it. They are actually predatory, the adults and larvae eat the other beetles and grubs that are burrowing under the bark[5]. They obviously overwinter as adults under the bark of dead or dying trees, and can be found under the bark year-round, merrily chowing down on the many other things that live under the bark, too. The probably aren’t actually beneficial, as such, because they don’t appear in a tree until the other bark pests have most likely already killed it, but they certainly aren’t doing any harm, either.

At any rate, there probably wasn’t any significance to the fact that they were under basswood[3] bark, they could just as easily have been in any of the other logs. It does make for a nice alliterative post title, though.

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[1] She had some logs that needed to be cut up into chunks so she could turn them into bowls, coasters, eggs, and similar art items with her lathe, and had a new electric chainsaw to use to do it. She lives in an apartment in town, where it would be a bit awkward to do much chainsawing (wielding a chainsaw on a public sidewalk is usually frowned upon, especially since the police station is only a couple of blocks down the road). Our driveway was a much less attention-grabbing place.

[2] She’d been storing the logs along with several other types of wood in her apartment, and had recently started noticing beetles like these crawling around the place. “Now I know where they were coming from”, she said.

[3] Basswood, also known as Linden, is a very common tree around here. They have very nice-smelling blossoms around June, that honeybees really like. The seeds are attached to specialized leaves by a short stalk, that fly away when they get ripe and the wind blows.

[4] Unlike their relative Tenebrio molitor, whose larvae are the true mealworms.

[5] So, Seri, you can relax. The ones in your apartment aren’t going to start chowing down on the structure or damage any other logs you may have handy. Just so you know.