Ants on fruit trees!

[hedgewizard]

Hi folks, long time no see! (I's been busy, y'know)

I've got a problem with ants farming bloody aphids in my bloody fruit trees, and although I applied barrier glue some time ago it's already started to fail because of debris blowing around. I've only just got over the trauma of the price of the stuff too, so I was wondering what alternatives people have actually used.

I was thinking maybe vaseline?

[Cheezy]

In fear of repeating myself Hedgy, please follow this link. Please do report back if this works. It has worked for me and I believe Andy said it was cracking. I would like to prove this once and for all, then perhaps we could make it a sticky!

http://www.selfsufficientish.com/forum/ ... highlight=

[chadspad]

I have ants on my grapefruit tree because I have scale bugs which causes the tree to leak nice sugary stuff - could it be that u have scale bug too?

[hedgewizard]

Cracking avatar, Chadspad! We've got greenfly, which do exactly the same thing. That's why the ants farm them - for the sugar.

Cheezy, that ought to work but it's not practical on a larger scale - twelve fruit trees needing a spoonful of jam each every few days would soon bankrupt my jam supply (we're being miserly with the last of the Bridport Strangler Vine jam). I'm really looking for a mechanical barrier so the ants are stopped from farming, leaving me to deal with the aphids.

[Cheezy]

I have tried barriers (chemical), the problem with ants is that they are persistANT and will not be beaten.

They can be pursuaded tho. If jams out any sweet substance. You could make a sugar solution or better still golden syrup and have s delivery system near the tree.

By the way a spoon full of jam goes a long way a few weeks. And what seems to happen is that once they forget/destroy the greenfly for the sweet substance , they dont go back to farming after it runs out since they have no collective momory. Only if they find a greenfly out break again report back and start up again. But what seems to happen is the green fly get knocked back.

[hedgewizard]

That's good to know and I'll try it next time. This time I put a dab of engine grease on the outside of the old grease band and that did the trick - not very green tho!