Well, you've got big problems with those beetles, I've heard about them all over the south.
They're not as bad the last couple of years as they have been but we've lost hundreds of pines on our property to them. They do really well in dry periods because the trees get stressed by the drought and can't produce enough sap to protect themselves. Lord knows we've had no shortage of water THIS year! We've actually had trees just fall over, roots and all, because the ground was so wet.