Problems With Large Tree Dropping Limbs

We got a question here from Richie from Massillon. “I have a question about a tree. It’s a big, huge maple. It’s really old, but there’s something, I think it might be carpenter ants that are dropping huge limbs down out of it. I mean, we’re afraid somebody’s going to get hit with one of them. Just wondering what it could be, if it’s carpenter ants and what to do about it. What can we do? I mean, it’s dropped like three or four limbs.”

A lot of people think that carpenter ants are sometimes the cause. They’re more really the result of something else that’s going on. Because carpenter ants are in there, they’re feeding on dead wood, not live wood. So the fact that the carpenter ants are up there, something else is happening, something else is going on. I would recommend bringing a couple pictures from the tree at a distance and then some pictures of the tree up close where the limbs are dying back, where we can kind of blow it up, look at it on an iPad or a cell phone. That’ll help us help you.

Something else that we’ve seen, I’ve seen quite a few times over the years, is there’s different things that can affect maples. It’s not super common, but sometimes we’ll see an insect on there called scale. And when scale gets on the the limb, it actually sucks sap out of the limb itself, and it excretes a simple sugar as the excrement of the scale, and the ants are up there feeding on that.

So a lot of times when we see ants up there, they’re the visual thing that we see, but there’s actually something behind the scenes going on. And it would be my guess that there’s probably something else going on. That’s why I really would like to see a picture up close.

And if you have any of those limbs that have come down, maybe even bring, I mean, you can’t bring a big limb in, obviously, but a small section of it, or take pictures up close, because the scale’s a bug that blends very easily. It doesn’t really move around like an ant does, and it can blend very easily and look like part of the bark system, but it’s not. And so that’s one of the things we’re gonna look for.

And if that is the case, again, on a huge maple tree, you’re not gonna be able to spray it, unless you have a company like Davey Tree or somebody come in that can spray very large trees. But there are options that you can put on the ground around the base of the tree that will absorb into the sap system, and then run up into the top of the tree and get the insects that way. So it would be my guess, without seeing pictures, that there’s something like scale or something else going on, and the answer just up there as a result of that, not the actual cause.

Questions? Email us at [email protected] or call one of our two locations: Portage (330-499-0101) or Everhard (330-492-1243).