Does your pine tree look as though it could have a disease? Needles yellow and drooping? Could be wooly aphids: find out more.
These soft-bodies insects of the eriosomatinae family are not really aphids, however, they are closely related to aphids hence their name. Infestations may go unnoticed and untreated for years, which will result in stunted growth of the pine tree.
Pine tree wooly aphids arevery small, having a size of up to only 1/8 inch in length. They are soft-bodied and adults are typically covered with a dense white filament-like layer of wax. If you were to remove the waxy substance, the wooly aphids would appear to be green or purpilish in color. The foilage or mainbody of the trunk of the pine tree may appear to have a white, wooly series of masses on it, or in major cases of infestation the pine tree may actually appear to be covered in snow because there are so many wooly aphids present.
Some species of wooly aphids spend their entire lives on pines, both feeding and reproducing on the tree trunks. Other species of wooly aphids spend the winter on other plants, migrating from the evergreens in the fall and producing a new generation of wooly aphids that then flies to the pine tree to feed in the winter. Some species of wooly aphids even spend a portion of their lives on evergreen trees other than pines, typically the spruce family of trees, and will produce galls on these evergreens branches. Infested pine trees will have needles that turn yellow and die, as well as needle shoots which will droop due to the wooly aphid presence. If left untreated, infestation may become so severe that growth is stunted.
In late April, spray the trunks of any infested pine trees with an insecticide containing acephate or malathion. Make sure to saturate the entire tree, not just areas that appear wooly. You should also spray pine trees with infested needles again in late June. Also be sure to respray any pine trees which become reinfested, making sure to more thoroughly saturate the tree the second time around. You also want to make sure you saturate any vegitation that is growing beneath the tree in case they too are infested.
