Are Ants in Trees Beneficial?

[TheTreeSpyder]

To my imagery; the ants are like maggots that will eat only the dead tissue and perhaps save the day by reducing dead tissue ratio and providing air to sickly tissue.

Even if the tree were to fail, from some errant ant colimn damage, the tree was probably so far gone, in so many places; the ants were probably doing the tree the final favour, even then....

 

[sotc]

mike, i understand they dont excavate living tissue. i have been under the impression, like kenny, that they do excavate decayed tissue. my assumption that they increase decay is based on the moisture and oxygen they bring in to the cavity. the material they bring in, the excretians (sp?), all seem like things that would help to advance decay in the cavity which they would then excavate further. what say ye?

 

[Mike Maas]

what say ye?

Based on my observations, and Shigo's opinion, that ants play a minor roll in helping or slowing decay advancement. It may be that ants slightly slow decay in some cases, and slightly speed decay in others.

Wood decay has a range of O2 and H2O that it likes. Does ant activity optimize or reduce those conditions? I can't say for sure.

What is most important is the health of the tree. Healthy trees set up strong CODIT walls. Those walls much more important than how slowly the abandoned wood inside those walls decays away.

I would not advise killing ants in trees based on our current understanding of ants. Your money is much better spent reducing any stress the tree may have. Water during drought, test soil for problems, optimize growing conditions, and so on.

 

[Al Smith]

Ants need a moist environment. They don't eat wood. They cant, or don't, chew into healthy wood.

Okay,I'll buy into the fact that ants get in punky wood and nest .

I'm telling you though those danged things tunneled through some hard as a rock green cut shag bark hickory .It wasn't one bit rotten although it was full of sap being spring time .--However they chewed right into the heart wood .

I'm going to take some pictures of that stuff before it gets all burned up as I only have less than a cord left .

I'm not arguing the fact if they can gnaw through hickory because I've seen it .My question is why would they ? I've searched high and low on the net for the answer and came up with a big fat zero .

 

[SkwerI]

Green firewood is still dead wood. It cannot form CODIT and cannot repel pests or decay like living tissue.

 

[Al Smith]

Be that as it may, then why would ants attack hickory when in the same

stack was green cut silver and sugar maple with a much sweeter sap ?

 

[SkwerI]

The ants obviously disagree with your opinion on which wood tastes better.

 

[Mr. Sir]

There's no accounting for taste.

 

[Al Smith]

Well maybe I should make some maple tooth picks and hickory tooth picks and run a taste test myself .

Somewhere in that pile of wood I have some piss elm but I won't try that .

 

[CurSedVoyce]

Bet what ever was living in that wood prior to the ants was sweet and delicious to them Al...

 

[Mike Maas]

Hickory is hard, why would an ant waste his time chewing into it?
I gotta think something else was going on. Maybe a wood borer or termites got in there first and the ants were secondary, exploring existing tunnels or something.

Maybe that ant was particularly stupid.

 

[Al Smith]

Hickory is hard, why would an ant waste his time chewing into it?
.

Maybe that ant was particularly stupid.

That's the 64 thousand dollar question I can't figure out . As soon as it dried out the ants sought greener pastures in a manner of speaking .

That hickory was solid as a rock and split about like a rock too . All split with my trusty 5 pound axe and ripped with an old geardrive when it got too much to split even with steel wedges and an 8 pound sledge .

One of the things that prompted me to get off my lazy butt and finish my hydraulic splitter .

 

[Mike Maas]

Hickory is hard to split and stringy, it hangs together to the end, but the pay off is great burning wood, I think the best there is.

 

[Al Smith]

Probabley the best is Osage orange followed by locust and hickory which are both about equal regarding btu's per volume .

Oak falls in line after that and has the advantage of the fact it's easy to split . Of course with the hydraulics it's all easy to split as opposed to swinging and axe or maul . Use of the later leads a person into becoming somewhat of an expert in replacing handles too .

 

[woodworkingboy]

I'll take oak over locust firewood. The oak logs of the same size seem to last longer before burning up, don't know about the BTUs though. Varieties may vary between here and there. One thing about locust, it seems to hold relatively less water when green, or at least it loses it faster. The stuff burns well with little seasoning.

 

[Al Smith]

Black locust is somewhat resistant to rot for some reason . I think it actually has more btu's per volume than honey locust . Why they call it black is a mystery to me because it looks rather yellow unless I'm color blind .

 

[woodworkingboy]

I wondered about the "black" in the name too, until I started steaming the wood for chair backs, and the water turned black as coal. Something in the wood.....

Steamed black locust used for the curved parts here. The wood bends well with the right moisture content and an hour in the steamer.

 

[Al Smith]

Most excellent work as usual .

 

[Mr. Sir]

Very nice work, Jay. The black water was probably due to tannins leaching out of the wood. Oak does that too.

 

[woodworkingboy]

Thanks guys...and oak is also an excellent bending wood....some varieties better than others.

 

[stehansen]

Very intresting guys. Most every Valley Oak around here has ants in them farming the aphids. I understand that they keep other insects out of the tree and ultimately help the tree by doing this. Also they don't always nest in the tree. Many here have nests in the ground and climb their little skinny behinds all the way up in a steady stream. Nice looking chair WWB.

 

[sotc]

its beautiful, i love the contrast

 

[pigwot]

An old thread, but this article looked interesting:

Ants "repair" trees in symbiotic relationship

 

[BeerGeek]

Okay Pat, where can I find these ants' cousins who will come up here and start battling/munching on carpenter ants?....

 

[gf beranek]

Ant trees... misery