HELP!! Ants In TREE!!! Please Read!!

nickbachman

first of all, please, i beg of you, do not move this into the dead Pests and Diseases forum. i really need an answer quickly. here's the scenario: i collected a maple last week from my grandparent's farm (yes, last week. i got it then because they are moving soon, and the tree would be unavailable. i thought i'd take my chances.) when i got the tree, it had been cut down by a lawn mower many many years ago, and had a nice very thick trunk and it's only about 1 foot tall. also, ants were living in the heartwood and had killed it all and made a nice sabamiki on the whole trunk. after i dug it up, i carved out much of the dead wood and disposed of what i thought was all of the ants and eggs, then i submerged it overnight. they appeared to be gone, so i cut off all the leaves and almost all the shoots, potted the tree in a nursery can and put it in the shade. since then it's surprisingly been doing GREAT. i counted at least 30 new buds in just yesterday. then today i noticed one leaf died where the bark was scraped away and the cambium was healing over with a shoot sticking out of it. then i noticed a little burrowing hole in the branch, which means the ants are still there and living inside my beloved tree. even though the tree is doing very well, remember it's only been out of the wild for a week. what should i do dig out more deadwood till they're extinguished? apply some sort of pesticide? i'm freakin out!

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Stickboy

well what you could do is buy some sort of insecticide to kill the ants it should work. where i work my boss bought a tree and had the same problem. he bought some inseticeide to kill the ants and apllied it once a week for 2 weeks and they were gone. The stuff was a powder and he mixed it with water and spryaed it directly in the whole where the ants were and all over the trunk and branches. well i hope i helped ya a little bit. good luck with the tree.

Treebeard

Are you sure the hole isn't just left over from when it was infested in the ground? That would be my first thought.

Regards,

TB

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clrosner

Before using any checmicals. why not make sure you have more ants?

If it was my tree, I would make sure that it is separated from the rest of my trees.

I would take a few bottle caps and place a drop of honey in each one of them. I would put them close to the trunk and wait a few minutes... If you have an infestation most of the ants will come out for the honey...

I then have a small large mouth jar handy with rubbing alcohol in it. I pick up the bottle cap (with a tweezer and drop it in the jar of alcohol... Usually a few trips to the alcohol and the remainder of the ants should be eliminated...

You can continue to use the same bottle caps over and over.

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nickbachman

thanks for the replies, gents! i'm kinda perplexed as to the size of the colony i'm housing, since most ant colonies cannot survive without the queen...i hope i dont find the ugly beast....ick!

stickboy: thanks! that will be my second resort, just because i'm worried about killing the stressed tree.

TB: yes i'm fairly sure it's a new hole, bacause there was a little ledge of torn bark underneath where the hole is now, and the ledge was covered in the "sawdust" the ant's burrowing made. that combined with the dead leaf makes me think that they're hollowing out my branch.

clrosner: that's a damn good idea! and it kinda sounds fun! i'll let ya know how it goes.

Jonny D

I no this doesn't help you nickbackman, but i just thought i'd say to clrosner that, the honey and alcohol idea is great. I read this post earlier and didn't think i could add to it but just thought i'd say i'll keep that idea in mind in case i ever get an infestation! Thanks Jonny.

nickbachman

AHAAA!!!! i may have found the culprit! as i went to put down my bottle caps of maple syrup (we didnt have honey ) i noticed something gnawing on my tree! there it was, an ant larva (grub) eating the bark just underneath where he had apparently reared his ugly head once before. with the utmost precision, i snagged him with the nearest drinking straw, and squashed his maple-wood-filled-translucent body all over the concrete. granted, he was tiny and it wasnt much of a squishing as much as it was a smearing, but it got the job done. i put down the caps anyhow and hopefully there was only that one larva. (yeah right) but this raises a new question: how do i get rid of ant larvae infestation?

Stickboy

Good job, i have never heard of the hony thing before , its pretty clever.

clrosner

Just call me Ant killer!

Seriously they do have a place in our world, it's just that I don't want them on my trees!

What is that old saying, "Necessity is the mother of Invention!"

By the way, is it possible that what you captured and squished was a beetle borer?
Reading that you saw sawdust led me to believe it may not be ants.

__________________
Carl L. Rosner - near Atlantic City zone 6/7
arteacher3725@yahoo.com

CHECK OUT MY UPDATED WEBSITE AT[B]:
www.carlrosner.com