Females lay eggs in galleries constructed between the bark and the sapwood of the host tree. Egg galleries are 10 - 25 cm long, eggs are 1mm long, oval and shiny white. Upon hatching, larvae feed in separate feeding galleries radiating from the original gallery made by the adult female beetle. Adults may lay eggs more than once in a season. The beetles fly to the top of pine trees, attack shoots by boring into them, and feed in the pith as they tunnel towards the tip of the shoots.
Adults attack living pine trees of all sizes except seedlings.
In 1998, considerable damage, including tree mortality, was found to be occurring on Scots, red, white and jack pine in several counties in southwestern Ontario. It is not known whether Scots pine must be present to enable pine shoot beetle to reach populations high enough to damage healthy trees of other pine species. Research is ongoing. The pine shoot beetle has the ability to cause whole tree mortality in only two years. The pine shoot beetle can create its own brood material by first attacking the shoots of a healthy tree.