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What is this and what insect is it from?

5 months ago

We discovered that wood under our Trex railing was being eaten by some kind of insect. Apparently back in 2012 our HOA had termites but the Orkin man insisted this was not termites (as no tubes were found) . He suspected carpenter ants but we are not convinced that is correct either. It looks like the activity is old and we found these (attached photos). They are approx 1/2" and outer material almost looks like a leaf. Found tons of them.

Any idea what they are?

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Comments (2)

Fori
5 months ago
Where are you located?

Are these hollow? They look a little bit like cocoons of something, or some other kind of pupal case (which would confirm no to termites). They are a little too fuzzy to tell. Really old cockroach egg cases? Could just be some kind of seed case a critter left in there...try to get a close up of the best looking one you can find. :)
mamoseley
Original Author
5 months ago
Will attempt some better pics. They are not hollow. They are clearly something that ate the wood. Unless they went in after the wood was already eaten and rotten.
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What insect came from this egg case?
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Hi. Here is a link to some picture I took of the egg casing off of the leaf. The casing is ribbed and is no bigger than the tip of a pencil. The egg casing was attached to the underside rib of the oak leaf. This is just a curiosity on my part but I would like to know what is going on out there in the insect world in the garden. I appreciate all of y'all's time and effort in getting this identified! Here is a link that might be useful: Egg Casing
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What kind of tree? If a conifer of some kind, it could be resin.
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Very tiny, pin head size or smaller. There will be clouds of them over my lawn in the hottest time of the day. When you walk towards them them they will move away. Not gnat or fly like, they don't go for the ears, eyes or nose. I was maybe 5 feet away from the bugs in the pic. The picture has a less dense sample of the "clouds" that are usually there.
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I'll try that (it's been raining all day here so I'll wait until it dries out a bit, hopefully tomorrow) ... there's lots of funky looking stuff under that fabric liner and I would love NOT to have to move the whole trug to another location (it's close to a garage with wood clapboard now). There are also several creamy white clusters like these, which may be completely unrelated to the wood slat damage; they look like eggs to me and may be perfectly harmless -- even beneficial??
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