Our recent cold snap might have slowed the pine beetles down a little, but that’s about it. Still, this is a pretty interesting discussion of the issue . . .
Montana’s recent record-breaking cold snap probably didn’t cause widespread mortality in the state’s tree-eating mountain pine beetle population, but it may have killed beetles in localized areas, according to forest health experts.
“It really takes quite a bit to kill those guys,” Diana Six, a forest entomology and pathology professor at the University of Montana, said of the cooked-grain-of-rice-sized insects with big bites.
The insects can stand temperatures as low as 30 below, she said.