APHIDS AND ANTS ON FRUIT TREES. 
S. D. CoNNER, Purdue University Agricultural Experiment Station. 
As an amateur horticulturist I have had quite a lot of trouble with 
aphids on fruit trees, particularly those trees around the residence. 
Year after year I have seen the young, growing shoots of the apples, 
cherries and peaches literally covered with various kinds of aphids until 
the young leaves curled up and stopped growth. Without dovbt the 
growth of the young trees has been very much set back and the vitality 
of the trees sapped. I have used nicotine sprays with more or less 
success, but it takes eternal vigilance and many expensive sprayings to 
keep them down. 
In observing the habits of the aphids I have noticed the well-known 
fact that ants were very much in evidence wherever the aphids were 
present. I, of course, had been told that the ants did no damage to 
the trees, but nevertheless I hated to see them profiting from such a 
pest as the aphids, so in the early spring of 1917 I purchased a can of 
tree tanglefoot and applied a two-inch band of this sticky material about 
one-fourth inch thick around each tree, for the purpose of keeping the 
ants and any other crawling insect off the trees. Well, I stopped the 
ants and, much to my surprise, I had no aphids on the trees. The aphids 
have wings, but they did not seem to use them to good advantage, for 
wherever there were no ants there were no aphids. Some weeks later 
I noticed on an apple tree some aphids and, looking closer, I saw some 
ants. I examined the sticky band on the tree trunk and found that 
some tall grass had bridged it over, allowing the ants to get up the 
tree, where, I presume, they carried the aphids. I removed the grass, 
sprayed the tree with nicotine and had no more aphids on that tree. 
It appeared to me that my young trees made a much more vigorous 
and sustained growth than they ever did before. 
Among other trees I banded was a sour cherry standing near a 
fence. The tanglefoot was applied high to this tree. A water sprout 
that came out below the tanglefoot was soon completely covered with 
black aphids, while not an aphid was to be seen above the band until 
some weeks later, when the limbs near the fence, becoming heavy with 
fruit and new growth, sagged and touched the fence. Then ants and 
aphids appeared on that side and gradually spread all over the whole 
tree. I watched my trees all summer, and so long as I kept the ants 
off the trees I saw only a few scattering aphids. I saw one good colony 
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