Warmer Weather is Good For Beetles, Bad For Pines

The San Francisco Chronicle reported Wednesday that mountain pine beetles are in the midst of a "baby boom," and that unseasonably warm weather is the root cause.

Instead of mating just once a year like they typically do, Colorado's lucky mountain pine beetle population is getting an extra go at it due to a longer span of warm weather, churning out an extra generation of pine tree killers.

Researchers from the University of Colorado noticed in 2008 that the tiny rice-sized beetles were swarming two months ahead of schedule, so they spent the summers of 2009 and 2010 looking at them more closely. They discovered that the beetles morphed into adults, escaped their tree nests, attacked nearby pine trees and laid eggs sooner than normal. This group's offspring then did the same cycle and ended up infesting another round of pine trees, making it the second infestation of the season.

Since the stands of dead pine trees-millions of acres spanning Canada and the U.S.- make for a heightened risk of forest fires, some enterprising wood products companies are making lemonade from lemons by turning the "beetle kill trees" into flooring.