Pine shoot beetle: what the agencies record

This page reports what the official source says. It is not legal advice: ask the office named here. It describes the sources and does not diagnose any tree or say what should be done with one. Each section names its source, all read on October 10, 2026. The pine shoot beetle is an introduced insect in North America. The United States federal quarantine for it was removed in 2020, and Natural Resources Canada says the Canadian regulations have also been lifted. The parent page, insect pests of trees, compares this beetle with the other pests on the list.

Names

Natural Resources Canada, called NRCan, gives the scientific name Tomicus piniperda (L.), the French name grand hylesine des pins, and the other common names common pine shoot beetle and larger European pine shoot beetle. It places the beetle in the family Curculionidae and lists Blastophagus piniperda and Myelophilus piniperda among the synonyms. The USDA Forest Service paper by Haack and Poland, published in 2001, uses the family name Scolytidae.

Hosts

NRCan says the beetle attacks many pines in its native range and that Scots pine appears to be the principal host in Europe and is preferred over native pines in North America. It names lodgepole pine and Monterey pine as North American species planted in Europe that have been attacked, and Yunnan pine plantations in China as particularly susceptible. In North America, NRCan says most pines appear suitable for the life cycle and for adult shoot feeding, while the female is more selective about egg laying and uses a species such as jack pine only when Scots pine or freshly fallen trees are not available. Haack and Poland report that the beetle is most commonly found in Christmas tree plantations made up largely of Scotch pine that are poorly managed, with few insecticide applications and high stumps and cull trees left as breeding material.

Signs as the sources list them

NRCan describes adults 3 to 5 millimetres long, light brown when they emerge and dark brown later. Larvae are legless, curved white grubs with a brown head, 4 to 5 millimetres long when mature. It says adults tunnel into the growing shoots of healthy pines through summer and autumn, with resin tubes left where they enter, near the shoot base. The damaged shoots turn yellow-red, bend over, fall off and gather on the ground, and the loss of whole shoots thins the crown, especially at the top. In felled or weakened trees, NRCan lists brown and white wood dust in bark crevices near the entry point. Under the bark, it says, the egg galleries run along the grain, vertical on standing trees and horizontal on fallen ones, with winding larval galleries 2.5 to 10 centimetres long at right angles to them, each ending in a pupal cell. Blue-stain fungi may be introduced and stain the wood. Adults leave through clusters of round holes about 1.5 millimetres across. It says standing trees that host a brood die back in the limbs and may eventually die.

Life cycle as the sources state it

NRCan and Haack and Poland both give one generation a year. Adults fly from overwintering sites under the bark at the base of pines in late winter or spring once temperatures pass 10 degrees Celsius, which NRCan calls one of the earliest flights among bark beetles in North America. Haack and Poland give daily highs beginning to exceed 10 to 13 degrees Celsius. Adults look for freshly cut stumps, logs and branches, and for severely stressed live pines, and the sources say they find them by host odours such as alpha-pinene. A female chews into the inner bark and is joined by one male. She cuts a gallery along the grain and lays eggs singly along its walls. NRCan says larval development finishes in late May or June, and new adults emerge from July. Haack and Poland say emerging adults do not start a second generation but fly to the crowns and feed inside the shoots through summer and autumn, becoming sexually mature. NRCan says each adult may destroy as many as six healthy shoots in this feeding. Both sources say the adults leave the shoots after the first freezes of autumn and move to the base of the tree, NRCan adding that the usual place is just above the duff layer where snow gives cover. Haack and Poland note that in mild-winter areas such as southern Europe and southern China adults typically overwinter inside the shoots.

Where it is recorded

NRCan says the beetle is native from the Atlantic coast of Europe to Japan and Hong Kong, and from the timberline in Fennoscandia to north Africa. It says the beetle was first found in the United States in Ohio in 1992, likely brought in wood packing material several years earlier, and was found afterwards in other states around the Great Lakes and in southern Ontario and Quebec. NRCan places it in most northeastern states from Wisconsin to Maine and south to Missouri and Virginia, and says it is established in southern Ontario and Quebec but has not spread as widely in eastern Canada.

Haack and Poland give the early record. A Christmas tree plantation manager near Cleveland, Ohio, collected the beetles on July 1, 1992, and the species was identified by July 16, 1992. Five more states reported it within a month: Indiana, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New York and Illinois. The paper adds that a specimen taken from a white pine shoot in Ingham County, Michigan, in 1991 was found in a private collection afterwards, and that tree-ring analysis of a Scotch pine plantation in New York indicated severe shoot damage since the late 1980s. By December 2000 the beetle was known in 303 US counties in 12 states and in 43 counties in Ontario and Quebec. A single adult in a trap, trap log or shoot was enough for APHIS to count a county as infested. The APHIS final rule says the beetle had by 2020 spread from one Ohio farm to 20 states.

Regulated status and reporting

Haack and Poland describe a federal quarantine imposed in November 1992 on the movement of pine trees, logs and certain pine products from infested to uninfested areas. APHIS removed it. Its final rule, published in the Federal Register on October 1, 2020 and effective November 2, 2020, removed the domestic quarantine (7 CFR 301, Subpart G) and the restrictions on importing host material from Canada (7 CFR 319). APHIS gave its reasons as follows: the program was ineffective in slowing the spread, damage was found to be minimal, and the change would give states flexibility and free federal resources. It said states may impose and enforce their own quarantines without federal regulation. NRCan says the Canadian and American regulations, which were aimed at the Christmas tree trade, have been lifted because of the apparent low risk to native pine forests and because the costs were judged to outweigh the benefits. The sources do not give a report line for the beetle. Florida's plant pest rule lists it among the pests it names, as set out on the Florida firewood page. For agencies that take reports of regulated pests, see the pages on reporting a pest in the United States and Canada.

How serious the sources call it

NRCan says the early fear of invasion of natural pine forests did not materialise, and that damage has mostly been to stressed Scots pine and to native jack pine planted on poor sites. It calls adult mining of fresh shoots the most significant economic damage, with yellowed, deformed shoots that break off and matter most in nurseries and Christmas tree plantations. It calls the beetle a primary pest in Christmas tree plantations and a secondary pest in weakened and freshly felled trees. APHIS describes it as a secondary pest of pine not able to successfully attack healthy trees, and reports little damage to native pines, plantations or the nursery trade. In the rule, APHIS answers commenters who feared losses in southeastern and western pine forests by pointing to its 2015 analysis and to the Great Plains as a natural barrier to westward spread. Haack and Poland treat the beetle as a pest that regulators and growers managed through survey, trapping and compliance programs.

This page gives no control methods, product names, rates or timings. NRCan notes that in some jurisdictions only a licensed professional can apply pesticides; see pesticide licences for who may apply products. The beetle also appears on the register of attacks on pine, and Scots pine has its own profile in Scots pine.