Borers in Maple tree

stehansen

stehansen

Climbing Up
Joined
Aug 25, 2005
Messages
9,185
Location
Ceres, CA
I went on a consult the other day and the guy had a sugar maple with some normal looking borer holes (about 1/8") but then there were some large holes I would say about 3/8" to 7/16" with some large piles of frass outside them. They were concentrated around the crotch of the tree about 6' high. Anyone seen these before?
edit: The homeowner said that it had the small borer holes last year but these large holes just appeared this summer.
 
Yes, in ALB infested trees.

Begs for more details on the holes... can you figure out the direction? Are they straight? etc...
 
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  • #3
I couldn't say for sure Erik but they appeared to go straight into the wood. I stuck my finger in a little ways. I could possibly go check them out further on tuesday.
 
Please do.

Straight exit holes like that are characteristic of ALB. I can't say what else makes them like that.

Anyone?
 
5-6 years ago we had a little patch of Maple that had to get cut to create a quarantine area due to ALB. They have been present on the West coast.
 
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  • #9
I drove down and got some pictures today.

1. showing the frass on the ground
2. showing the frass in the crotch of the tree
3. hole
4. "
5. showing how deep the hole was, this was the deepest one I found, some are only in as far as the bark goes. Under construction?

I contacted the Ag extention in Merced county and sent them these same pictures as well.
 

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  • #13
I don't think so, most of the holes were full of frass. I have a tenative date with the merced co. guy for sept 16th, to meet with him at the tree and he will attempt to dig one of the buggars out.
 
Cool, I just signed up for a field day with the extension forester learning about our local forest pests
 
most of the alb infested trees we took down .. the tips were dying and all punky and the crotches looked like they were down range from a shooting gallery.... your exit wounds dont look to be ALB(could be) . Was the tree previously in decline?
 
Last edited:
consider Acecaps, drill a hole, shove a cap of Acephate in and see what happens, every 1.25 inches sound likes th application rate.
 
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  • #19
irish93stang said:
most of the alb infested trees we took down .. the tips were dying and all punky and the crotches looked like they were down range from a shooting gallery.... your exit wounds dont look to be ALB(could be) . Was the tree previously in decline?
Click to expand...

The tree looks good.
 
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  • #23
I met with the Cooperative Extension guy from Merced County this morning at the tree. He dug out some grubs using a hatchet. He found one big one (larva about 1 1/2" long and 3/8" in diameter) and several tiny little worms about as big as a fly maggot. There are huge black galleries under the bark. I forgot my camera but he is supposed to send me the pictures that he took. He isn't much of a bug guy, he is a disease guy, but he said that one of the other persons back at the office was an expert invasive pest ID person. Also that if this person couldn't ID the bug then there was a super expert person up in Sacramento that could identify it for sure. It looks like ALB from the description of the damage, but we won't know until the experts chime in. In the past decade there have been ALB found in California in a couple of places by LA and one in Sacramento, and a couple places in Washington State.
 
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  • #25
I don't know. I've never done this before. He would peel back the bark exposing the gallery until he found one with a big larva in it. He then did a few others in which he didn't find anything, and then found one with the small worms in it. He was trying to not hack the tree up too bad, (but he did) and this tree is toast anyway IMO.
 
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