Older properties can often experience the presence of wood-boring insects, which include certain beetles, or ‘woodworm’, that live off wood and, in particular conditions, may seriously weaken building timbers. In the UK, such organisms include the furniture beetle, Anobium punctatum, death watch beetle, Xestobium rufovillosum, and species of wood-boring weevil.
Damage to wood is caused when the beetle larvae, or grubs, tunnel into the timber, where they pupate and later emerge as adults via flight holes or fissures. Females then lay eggs in crevices
