ants – Xtremehorticulture

Ants Not Good Guys in Fruit Production

Leave a Comment / ants, fruit trees / xtremehorticulture

Q. I searched your blog but could not discover if ants are good pollinators or not. I know bees are. I have over 2 acres in Sandy Valley and have seen 6 to 8 different types of ants scurrying about the property. Are ants beneficial or will they become a problem for fruit trees I am planting? Ants and aphids living and working together on apricot. The aphids suck plant juices and release sugary excrement. The ants use this sugary excrement as a food source and take it back to their nest in the ground. Ants move aphids to new locations in the tree or neighboring trees that are touching to expand their “herd” of aphids. A. The best pollinators for fruit trees, hands-down, are honeybees. More specifically Italian honeybees, the type that produce honey collected by beekeepers. They are workhorses when it comes to pollinating fruit trees and vegetable gardens. Female leaf cutter bees cut nearly perfect circles in the leaves of many plants including grapes and fruit trees. These leaf circles are used by the bees for raising their young.Leaf cutter bees are good pollinators of late season flowering plants. Other types of bees, solitary bees like the leafcutter which cuts near perfect circles in the leaves of roses, grapes and basil, are strong workers later in the year and important pollinators for late spring and summer bloomers like alfalfa and clover. Rosemary is a good winter and early spring flowering plant to encourage pollinators for spring pollination of fruit trees. Ants don’t contribute anything to pollination of fruit trees in my opinion. I consider them mostly nuisance insects that contribute to insect problems in fruit trees in a secondary way. How? They love aphids and will defend them to their death against anything or anyone that threatens aphid populations. This short video is taken at our family farm in the Philippines. It shows Weaver ants, that create their nests in the canopies of trees, protecting some scale insects they have moved and are now farming on the branches of tropical fruit trees. Ants do the same thing in temperate environments but most of our ants have nests in the ground. In fact, ants distribute aphids throughout a fruit tree canopy similar to how we move cattle to new pastures. Aphids are common in the spring of the year feeding on new growth of fruit trees. Their feeding causes leaves to become sticky, roll and curl. Ants move mother aphids around to increase populations and their own food supply for subterranean nests. While feeding on plant leaf juices, aphids drip sugary excrement that ants use for food inside their colony. Next time you find an aphid problem in fruit trees, look at the ground nearby. You will see an “ant mound”, an opening to a subterranean ant nest. There is a good reason for their close association to aphids. For this reason, I don’t like ants in orchards and I make a point of eliminating ant colonies when I see them near fruit trees. Several methods can be used to eliminate them but I find ant baits, taken back inside colony, to be among the most effective. Seldom are ants beneficial when growing plants for human food.

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Shiny Leaf Sheen on Roses May Be Aphids Feeding

1 Comment / ants, aphids, bees attracting, sticky, sugary / xtremehorticulture

Q. There’s a glossy sheen on my rose leaves that’s not suppose to be there. I have the problem every year and I usually just give them a good spray with the hose and that helps but doesn’t seem to be the cure. Any suggestions that don’t involve chemicals? A. I think what you are seeing may be some residue from some feeding insects on roses. These insects excrete (release) a sugary substance from their feeding that falls on plant parts like leaves. Aphids on unopened rose buds/flowers. They feed on plant sap. They use the sugars in plants sap as a food source for energy. The remaining sugars are excreted from the aphids where they cause a shiny sheen on leaves that is sticky. This attracts ants and bees. If this is what you are seeing it should be slightly sticky and may attract ants and bees that will collect this residue for feeding. These insects pull out plant sap that contains sugars for their own feeding and there is so much of it in the plant sap that their excretion contains a lot of sugars. Insects that release this kind of “honeydew” as it is sometimes called include aphids, scale insects, leafhoppers and whiteflies. Roses aren’t the only plants these insects feed on. We will seed them on most trees, shrubs and even pines. Aphids on undersides of pepper leaves Repeat applications of soap and water sprays will usually control them until hot weather comes. High temperatures are not a good thing for insects like aphids and help to keep them under control until the cool fall weather sets in when we may see them again.

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Dark Brown or Black Shells on Oleander May Be Scale Insects

2 Comments / ants, brown apricot scale, control, insecticide, lecanium scale, oleander sticky, scale, sugar / xtremehorticulture

Q. I have a serious infestation of hard shelled black insects on my oleanders. I have a tree-like hedge of oleanders on both sides of my home. One of the oleanders is heavily infested but the problem is spreading rapidly to all the others. When I discovered the problem this weekend the oleander was black with thick black shelled insects about the size of an apple seed with sticky honeydew dripping down the trunk and stems. My neighbor thought they were black aphids so I power sprayed the oleanders with water and used a soapy water rinse. Unfortunately, the bugs seem to be adhered and need to be picked off. They are not on the leaves but are on the stems and trunks and climb higher than I can reach. I am attaching photos and would appreciate any advice you can give me. Will the 100o+ weather kill them? I removed the most heavily infested branches but that barely made a dent in the insect population so I wonder if I have to remove the whole oleander tree. A. This is one of the many scale insects. Scale insects are not terribly common in southern Nevada. They are difficult to control because the insect is living under a protective “shell” it created. Because the insect does not move around once it creates its “shell” they don’t attract attention. Frequently they come to our attention because of the sticky sap they excrete is shiny and attracts ants. Oftentimes the question becomes how can I control ants, not realizing the ants are there because of other insects like scale and aphids. The ants can move the scale insects around so it is best to control them as well. If you don’t have very many of them you can treat each scale with alcohol and a cotton swab. But usually there are too many. The usual recommendations for controlling scale insects is to either spray a horticultural oil on top of them in early spring to suffocate them or use a conventional insecticidal spray. a conventional insecticide when the insect is no longer protected by its hard outer covering, the scale itself. Never spray an oil when a plant is in bloom. Usually two winter or early spring applications are called for. One of the many horticultural oils for suffocating insects. Particularly good on soft-bodied insects like aphids, mites and the like but they will also kill beneficial insects so use it where and when it is needed and not indiscriminately. These insects are not hard to kill when they are not under those shells. The females release young scale insects without the scale (called crawlers) around May. It is at this time the insects are most vulnerable. It is also the time when it starts getting hot and the spraying oils in the heat is not recommended. I have done it very early in the morning with no problems to the trees but you must do it early in the morning. When in doubt, spray a small area of the plant first and wait 48 hours to see if the plant reacts negatively to it. If it doesn’t, go ahead and spray in the summer as well but do it in the cool morning hours right after sunrise.

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Ants Farming Aphids on Pyracantha

1 Comment / ants, firethorn, green bugs, plant lice, pyracantha, sticky sap / xtremehorticulture

Q. We have a couple pyracantha bushes. We noticed this past summer some small, pen point sized, bright green bugs on the end of the branches. A day or two later I noticed ants in those same places but couldn’t tell if they were eating the bugs or not. Please advise if we need to do something. Pyracantha, sometimes called firethorn,, with its red berries.Some have orange, yellow and off-red. A. From the sound of it the bush had aphids, sometimes called plant lice, but summer is not the usual time that aphids appear. Aphids normally appear with new growth in the spring and disappear when it gets hot. Ants are attracted to aphids because the aphids release sugary honeydew when they’re feeding on the pyracantha leaves. Leaf cupping on plums due to aphid feeding in the spring. Ants “farm” the aphids, take this honeydew excretion and use it. So you may see ants traveling up and down the pyracantha gathering and transporting honeydew to their nest in the soil. Ants may even move the aphids around to new locations to expand their “herd”. It’s not a big problem if these are just aphids. The aphids will cause some stickiness on the leaves and may cause leaves to fall from the plant if the feeding becomes heavy. But that time of year I would not expect them to be a big problem. Ants herding aphids for their honeydew If the problems is excessive the easiest thing to do is mix some soap and water, about as much as you would use when you would wash your dishes. Put it in a spray bottle and spray the soapy mixture directly on these green bugs, usually on the underside of the leaves. You will probably have to do this every couple of days since soap and water does not leave any poisonous residue on the leaf surface and these spots will repopulate quickly after the spraying is done. If you want more permanent control then you can use a traditional insecticide that has a label listing ornamental plants and aphid control. You can also treat the ant nest in the soil. Pouring boiling water on the ant hill will give some temporary organic control of the ants.

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