ant wrote:
Sigh. Again. Many of the trees I've planted (several hundred so far) over
the past 13 years or so are covered in scale/sticky/sooty stuff, and every
struggling tree is covered in ants. If a tree looks "clean", but later has
ants walking all over it, it invariably ends up with this disease on it, and
suffers a set back. I never knew what the connection was with ants, but knew
that ants meant the tree was in for it.

Some trees that were doing well, now are dead.

This area seems to have a lot of ants, and I think there are termites here
too.



--
ant
Don't try to email me;
I'm borrowing the spammer du jour's addy

The ants are not the cause of your problem. They are feeding on the
sweet exudate from the scale inscects. The sooty mould is also a result
of the sugary exudate. Control the scale and the ants and mould will go
away.

How do you control the scale? There are a number of ways. Oil emusions
(white oil, pest oil etc.) are very effective.

http://www.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/informa.../scale_insects

http://www.greenharvest.com.au/fact_.../fs_scale.html

Killing the ants will NOT solve your problem.