Emerald ash borer found in St. Paul

Well, I've been trying to tell my husband that this was coming but it's even sooner than was expected. A tree was discovered in St. Paul last week to have been infected for around 3 to 5 years. My street will be devastated as almost every yard has ash in front. Apparently there is a treatment that will cost $100.00 a year but I don't know how toxic this is to other insect life. Me, I want to get another tree to take over if and when ours gets infected. We have the nicest looking one on the block. :~(

Minnesota has an estimated 900 million ash trees.

This message was edited May 19, 2009 6:30 PM

We have some ash on the boulevards in my part of Saint Paul, but mostly we have maples. I wonder why, after the whole bad elm experience, they'd plant so much of one type of tree to replace the elms. Peg

I believe that the treatment is Imidacloprid, found in Bayer Advanced tree and shrub. It's a systemic insecticide and will kill the grubs as they tunnel through the cambium since the insecticide is carried in the cambium. Most every garden center carries the Bayer Advanced product. I purchased some at Home Depot in Bloomington.
Mike

They found some in the Ash trees in DeKalb, IL also. I have a whole fence row of Ash trees. The USDA people came around two years ago wanting to take a sample tree, but they never came back to do it.

I live in Rosemount MN and have treated all three of my Ash trees. I used the systemic insecticide from Bonide from Gerten's Nursery in IGH. Our whole cul-de-sac has Ash trees. So I am going to go talk to my neighbors also.

There is hope on the horizon. Three natural predators, or parasitoids, of the Emerald Ash beetle have been discovered and identified ( Yang 2006 China). The USDA has released all three in Michigan in the fall of 2007. According to the local County Cooperative Extension Agent here in Lucas, County Ohio ( 35 mi south of Detroit MI, the epicenter of the EAB invasion) the results look promising. While IPM ( integrated pest management ) won't eradicate EAB it could bring the numbers down to such that it will no longer be an unstoppable scourge.

There are also two new chemical controls emerging as front runners with better results than imidacloprid or Bonide. One is a compound of the Neem tree and the other is emamectin benzoate, called Tree-age.

http://www.aphis.usda.gov/plant_health/plant_pest_info/emerald_ash_b/downloads/eab-biocontrol.pdf
http://www.urbanforestrysouth.org/resources/collections/emerald-ash-borer/

I uge you to contact your local County Cooperative Extension agent for the most current updates on EAB control methods and which chemicals have been registered for use in your states. Hopefully you won't be driving through blocks and blocks of neighborhoods totally devoid of trees and dotted with dead ash stumps. This is the scene we have here.