Hello,
I noticed a lot of ants on my Austrian black pine, so after taking a closer look there were ants that attacking some smaller insect-like common fruit fly. Also, some needles have some white residue (take a look at the photo)
Does anybody know what is the insect, for now, I’m using the water method to remove them?
Aphids
Read up on the symbiotic relationship of ants and aphids
they farm them on your tree …
Ok, I found info about aphids and ants :), thanks for the point in the right direction
Most ants and aphids are washed with water method, but for the next 6 days, it is raining in Belgrade so the chemical solution isn’t used yet.
Currently I’m experimenting with some biological solutions with some bacterias and Trichoderma asperellum and Trichoderma viride and keeping eye on trees.
depending on the amount of infestation manual removal also works quite well.
What do you mean by manual removal?
To scrape aphids from infected pine needles with something like cotton wool or tweezers?
Infected needles with white stuff I plucked manually.
squashing them with your fingers. Though with a pine/conifers and needles that can be sometimes not feasible as you can not get into the many crotches.