 Welcome to the Spring Fever Garden Forms, and my name is Tom Kalb, and I'm an Extension Horticulturist in the Department of Plant Sciences. Let's get started and talk about the emerald ash borer. This is a very destructive insect that we've heard a lot about, but it's yet to be detected in North Dakota. Here to provide us with the latest information is Joel Zalesnik. Joel is the Extension Forester for North Dakota State University. He received his PhD at Michigan State, and Joel teaches prairie and community forestry on the NDSU campus. Joel leads the NDSU Extension activities in forestry, including our efforts in managing this past. Joel, welcome to the forums. Okay, well, thank you, Tom. Thanks everybody for joining us tonight. I will try to be brief and to the point, which is a little difficult because there's so much to discuss about emerald ash borer that we could discuss. Emerald ash borer was discovered in the U.S. in 2002 in the Detroit, Michigan area, and we still haven't found it in North Dakota. When I last gave an update, which was in 2015, six years ago, I really thought that was the year we would find it in North Dakota, and still we haven't. So that's a good thing. It's not that we haven't looked because we have. So I want to start out with this, where is EAB? Last I gave a presentation to this group was in March of 2015, and the closest place to us where EAB was found was in the Twin Cities area. And I think, oh, that's right, this is automatically advancing. By the end of 2015, it was found throughout the Twin Cities area and up by Duluth, although that entire county is shown. And then in early 2016, it's continuing to spread in southern Minnesota along the Wisconsin border. By the end of 2016, again, south, it wasn't really coming up our way anymore. 2017 was a big year, though. Early 2017, nothing new coming our way. But late 2017, it was discovered in Winnipeg. And that worried a lot of us because Winnipeg's colder than North Dakota even. And that was one of the things that a lot of people were hoping for was that cold temperatures would stop EAB, and they won't. They'll slow EAB, but they won't stop it. So that was late 2017, early 2018, Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Also in 2018, in September, starts moving up the I-94 corridor from the Twin Cities to Clearwater. And by April 2019, Sock Center, Minnesota. And that was, and by the end of 2019, that's where it was that. 2020, they keep switching maps on us. 2020, at the beginning, it looks like it's spreading in southern Minnesota again. Kind of between Sioux Falls and Twin Cities is where I saw it most. And by the end of 2020, it's the same. And then they switched map formats on us. So there's not a whole lot new since 2021 or since December. It's still south of us or south in southwestern Minnesota. So EAB has slowly gotten closer. So let's look, where is EAB closest to North Dakota? Winnipeg, Sioux Falls, and Sock Center. And in the Sioux Falls area, it has spread to a second county. And what they've been finding there is that, yes, it's spreading, but slower than it did in the eastern US. So when will we find it? That is the million dollar question. I don't know. Nobody knows if I had a crystal ball. My crystal ball was wrong. I thought we would have found it six years ago. So just to let you know what we're doing about this, we, the royal we, NDDA, North Dakota Department of Agriculture, is leading trapping efforts for this in 2020. They had, I want to say it was about 300. I can't remember the exact number, 300 traps around the state. And this is where they were, and they did not find emerald ash borer. And that's great. In 2021, there's going to be about 250 traps. The locations are to be determined. They're still figuring that out. Over the course of the last six years, they've had anywhere from about 150 traps to as many as 800 traps around the state. So we're looking for it. And this is the actual official traps. That doesn't include the site visits that folks do. If you're looking, if you're worried about your tree, might have emerald ash borer, please contact your local county extension agent, or you can contact me, or you can contact Charles with the Department of Agriculture or Pete Gogg with the North Dakota Forest Service. We all work together. We communicate regularly and how is it? About a month ago, we were all out in the field together looking for some EAB. This was on the Red River. Charles had been out. Charles L. Hart had been out hiking or snowshoeing. And he saw this tree. He was worried, hey, does this tree have EAB? Look at all the damage that's on it. All the woodpecker damage. And the short answer is no, it was not EAB. Charles and Pete and I all went out there and we peeled bark back. And we looked for insect larvae. We found some insect larvae, but they were not EAB. So that's great. That was my first potential EAB for the year. I've since had a second site visit. And just this past week, two more email exchanges where we were able to do it over email just through photos and so far nothing. And I'm sure Charles and Pete and others get questions like this all the time. And we're happy to come out and check because this is really important to our state. We have a lot of ash trees, a lot of ash resources and our shelter belts, our cities and in our native forest. So what's new? Well, as of January 14th, the federal quarantine was removed. OK, the federal government had a quarantine that said EAB is in certain counties. From those counties, you cannot export firewood. You can't export lumber, timber or any actual ash trees. And that was removed in mid January of this year. We knew it was coming. We knew it was coming months in advance. Basically, the federal government has said, you know what, EAB is here. It's going to spread. There's nothing we can really do to control it, not majorly to control it. The federal government has put more efforts into parasitoids, parasitoids from Asia that actually do a pretty good job of controlling EAB. And so they're putting their money in that basket. At the same time as the federal quarantine was removed, North Dakota, a day or two later, announced the statewide regulations. And it says, we're going to have a quarantine that says, hey, you can't bring ash into North Dakota. You can't bring firewood into North Dakota unless, here's the wording of the regulations. Roughly, roughly, I don't have the actual regulations with. But preventing the movement of ash products into North Dakota from areas that are known to be infested, all hardwood firewood cannot be transported into North Dakota from a regulated area unless it's been treated or inspected by officials from that state. And firewood must be labeled to county of origin if it's from partially infested states. So there are certain counties in Minnesota where emerald ash borer has not been found. It's OK to bring firewood into North Dakota from those counties, but it has to be labeled. So those are the in brief, in brief. I'm sure there's a lot more details to this. But that's kind of a summary of the current regulations for North Dakota. If you're looking for EAB, I would suggest our EAB signs and symptoms or our EAB biology and integrated pest management document. Just look for E1634, NDSU extension E1634. I feel like I'm calling bingo. So there's a lot of good information in there. And I'm just going to hit a quick summary, some quick highlights here. One of the big things we look for for EAB is these D shaped exit holes and they are small. They're about an eighth of an inch across. So they're tiny, but it looks like a capital letter D. And it can be in a branch as small as half or three quarters of an inch. We used to think it was down to one inch, but they can be even smaller. It's pretty amazing what the insects can use. And under the bark, we look for the serpentine galleries. That's where the beetle larvae feed on the phloem and a little bit into the sapwood of the tree. And it's distinctly serpentine. It goes back and forth, back and forth, especially when the infestation is small or it's just started. Because later on, when there are dozens of these in the tree, that serpentine gallery kind of goes away. There are a lot of native boars and bark beetles of ash trees that have very unique galleries. And some of those boars, the galleries are curvy. They're curved. And I used to say about EAB that it has curved galleries. And it's, and I've since changed that it's really serpentine. That's really pretty characteristic of emerald ash borer. But sometimes it can be hard to distinguish these from native pests. Those D-shaped exit holes, there's one native ash borer we have that the exit hole, it's kind of oval. It is oval. And boy, it can look like a D-shape to the untrained eye, even to the trained eye. It raises your eyebrows. OK, so that's a little bit for EAB signs. Let's look at symptoms on an ash tree. Having general dieback from the crown, from the tips down, from the top down is one of the big symptoms. But we see a lot of dieback on ash trees in North Dakota. There are a lot of environmental stresses here and our own native insect pests. We often will see epicormic branches. Some people call these water sprouts. And this is also kind of a general characteristic of crown dieback. The crown dies back and the tree tries to survive by sending out these water sprouts. And we see this with a lot of pests, with a lot of health problems. One thing I have not seen with other pests are these bark splits. Above those larval galleries where the EAB larvae have killed the cambium, sometimes the bark will split like this. And I've seen this a few times. It's subtle. It's subtle. You've got to know what to look for. And the other thing is bark flecking. They call this bonding from woodpeckers. And it's interesting because woodpeckers, when they're going after EAB larvae, they don't go very deep into the tree. And so the way the hole is formed in the bark is actually different from EAB than it is from other insects. And it's really subtle. And I have a hard time training my eye to see that difference. To me, it's a woodpecker hole. I can't tell. But I'm starting to see it. It's a smaller hole and it's not very deep. And when the woodpeckers are going for those native pests that we have, the holes are bigger and deeper. And you've got to train your eye. My colleague Leslie Johnson with the North Dakota Forest Service, she's really good at it. She can tell the difference. So again, these are hard to distinguish from other pests. So what we really need to do is we need to find larvae and peel back the bark. And if we find the larvae with these bell-shaped segments, that's emerald ash borer. And it needs to be confirmed by an expert. Because then there are some larvae of our native insects that look kind of close. So every time we find larvae, we collect them. And if we're really suspect, we'll send them on to an expert. So again, talk to your local county extension agent, call me, call Charles, or call Pete, or send us an email. OK. Very briefly, because I know this is really short tonight. How do we control the AB? Well, it's hard to control directly. But in terms of forest, our forest and maintaining ash trees, I want to say diversify, diversify, diversify. And if you're looking for, and I don't know, shoot. I don't know if that is showing up. I don't know if that's showing up, the ND tree selector, the North Dakota tree selector, www.ag.ndsu.edu slash tree dash selector. You can look for what species are generally available in North Dakota. Sorry, generally recommended for North Dakota. Because of their cold hardiness, you can change the characteristics you want if you're looking for tall trees, or looking for medium trees, deciduous versus conifer. There's all kinds of things you can do on the tree selector to narrow down those characteristics that you're looking for. No guarantee that we might have something. If you're looking for a tree that's low maintenance or no maintenance, well, you may be disappointed there. A lot of maintenance is needed. And I see there's some questions coming in. We'll get to those at the end here. So diversify, plant something other than ash. Biological, there are some parasitoids that will control EAB. And those have been released in Minnesota. They've been released in South Dakota. And they do a fairly good job of keeping numbers low. I'm not going to say they get rid of every single EAB, because they don't, but they help to keep numbers low. And the cold temperatures have slowed EAB down. And I want to share this with you. Back in 2019, we did a workshop down in the Minneapolis area with a bunch of tree professionals from North Dakota. And one colleague from Minnesota, I think it was DNR. It might have been Department of Ag, Anthony Hanson. He had built this map based on low temperatures from January 2019. How cold did it get at the end of January 2019? Well, in the Dakotas and Minnesota, in some places it got as low as 40 below. And the colder it gets, the more EAB larvae will be killed. But it's never quite 100%. So based on these temperatures and based on the death curve, this is what he came up with. That in terms of dieback of emerald ash borer larvae, well, in central Minnesota, where it was 40 below, we expected 90% of them to be killed. That's really good. This is predicted EAB mortality if it were here. If it were here. So yes, the colder it gets, the better the mortality, the higher the mortality, but it's never quite 100%. And as part of this, there was a paper that came out in 2013 that said, hey, based on the cold temperatures and based on where ash is and how cold it gets for how long, maybe EAB will be controlled naturally. That populations will rise, it gets cold, the population drops. Populations rise, it gets cold, population drops. So they came up with this idea that maybe ash trees will not completely get wiped out. And it's possible. So in theory, I've come up with this. It's rock, paper, scissors. If you're familiar with that, I call it ecological rock, paper, scissors. And the theory is this, that EAB beats the ash trees, which is true, they do. But the ash trees can survive the cold temperatures, which they do, clearly. And the cold temperatures, well, they don't really kill all the EAB, but they do kill quite a few, can and help to limit EAB. And along with that, the parasitoids, those parasites that will kill EAB, help to limit EAB. So it's ecological rock, paper, scissors. In theory, we could possibly, we'll cross our fingers, maintain some level of ash in our forests, in our windbreaks, in our urban areas, but it's hard to know for sure. So that's the theory. Okay. Chemical, and chemical control of EAB, you know, since 2015, the main three are still the main three. Emidocloprid, dinotepheran and anemonectin benzoate, just very briefly, emidocloprid, very common. It is available for homeowner use. There's a whole bunch of generics out there. I say 70 to 80% effective. You know, effectiveness isn't necessarily about killing a certain percent of larvae. It's keeping numbers down where the tree can fight back. The tree can survive about 10 or 11 larvae per square meter of phloem. And emidocloprid will help the tree do that. Whoops, how did that go ahead? Dinotepheran, which is also in the same chemical class as emidocloprid. This is, there is a homeowner use, a formulation that's available for homeowners, Zilam, there may be some others. This one is very interesting because not only is it available as a soil drench, but also you can spray it on the bark. This chemical is very mobile within the tree. So if you spray it on the bark, it'll go through the bark into the phloem, into the Zilam, and move through the tree very easily. So, and there may be other formulation, I'm sure there are other formulations as well. Okay, emimectin benzoate is kind of the gold standard, but it's professional use only. This is sold professionally as triage. And there's at least one more that was, oh, came out a year or two ago, I can't remember. Anyway, it's a stem injection, and it's professional use only. It's 99 plus percent effective. It's very effective for at least two years, eight to $16 per inch of diameter of tree trunk. The last I heard, that could have changed. And it's highly, highly effective. Now, we don't recommend injecting trees yet because EAB hasn't been found, you could spend a lot of money that's not necessarily gonna help the tree. So we recommend waiting until EAB is found within 30 miles. And then you should probably start injecting if you so choose. With that, I think I'll just list our contacts again. And I think that's where I'm gonna end it because I know we have a lot of questions and we'll go forward from there. Okay, thank you, Joe. How about that map by DeSantis where it was mainly white, but it had some green and red flaking on it. What did the green and red indicate there? Green is there, red is where they believe ash will be totally wiped out. Green is where they think there may be some ash in the future. Obviously, North Dakota is mostly prairie, so it's mostly white, it's mostly not forested. But that's their estimate. Okay, there was a question early on about why does the EAB larvae produce or why does when the pest come out of the tree it makes a D-shaped hole? Why does the adult do that? That's just the, yeah, that's the characteristic. Boy, I've got some great pictures of that just not here in this presentation. That's a characteristic of that genus of beetle that when they exit the tree, the adults come out, they chew this exit hole and it's in the shape of letter D. If you look at birch trees that are suffering from bronze birch borer, which is a native pest of our birch trees, you'll see those D-shaped exit holes. It's very closely related to emerald ash borer, though each is specific to its own host. So you'll see that D-shaped exit hole on those species that are closely related. Okay, we do invite questions from the audience. Just put your question in the question and answer box. Here's a question, Joe. What is the emerald green insect or pupae? They're not sure. It's prevalent in western North Dakota ash trees. They find it under the bark layer. They see it in firewood often. Okay, I actually see that question right now. I'm thinking in here if I've seen a green larvae or green pupae under the bark on ash trees, I'm not sure. What I've often seen in western North Dakota is, well, all over North Dakota really, is ash bark beetle. It's a very distinct. It's a very distinct gallery. It's a very distinct, yeah, larval gallery in ash bark beetle. I've seen redheaded ash borer, ash lilac borer. Those are pretty common as well. We do see the six-spotted tiger beetle, which is very green, nice and emerald green like the EAB. But I'm not sure if I've seen something like this in western North Dakota. They're on a blank. How about are all varieties of ash affected by the borer? All of our native varieties native to the US. That's in North Dakota, we have green ash and black ash. There's a tiny little pocket of black ash native to North Dakota in the extreme northeast, kind of between Wahala and Cavalier. Mostly we see black ash in the swamps in northern Minnesota. There's a white ash, which is in southern Minnesota, which sometimes people have planted as an ornamental, and that is also killed by EAB. There's a Manchurian ash that people have planted in North Dakota that is not native, that is actually fairly tolerant of the insect. Not 100%, but it can fight it off pretty well. Okay, so that addresses one of the questions we had is how the different species are affected by the ash borer. So you say that Manchurian is somewhat resistant or shows a little resistance. Well, I think it's pretty resistant. I'd say it's got high resistance. It's more a question of how much pressure it gets. They found in the eastern US that it was getting so much pressure from the EAB because of our native ash trees. We're building up these huge populations that the Manchurian ash wasn't surviving terribly well, but in other areas where there's fewer of our native ash trees, it's done okay. I also want to point out mountain ash is not an ash. The name is mountain dash ash, and that dash is really important. That tells you that it's not an ash tree. It's not a true ash tree. It's actually in the Rose family, it's more closely related to apples than it is to ash. Joe, what's the size of EAB? The adult EAB, there's this classic photo, and I don't even think I have it here. There's two EAB mating. It's less than a penny. So probably maybe a dime across. There's a classic photo of an EAB on a penny and it's much smaller. When would you see that adult? The adults come out while they emerge in the late spring 450 degree days, no 1100 degree days. I can't remember the exact number. There's been mathematical models that were built, but I want to say like mid-June, it would be mid-June up here, maybe early June, but they kind of emerge starting then and then slowly throughout the rest of the summer. Okay, Joe, a person has, the neighbor has an ash tree, and they see like these green silk-like caterpillars that hang down in web-like things. Yes. Is that the evil ash borer? That is not the ash borer. In the last two years, especially in central North Dakota, we've had canker worms. And canker worms are little crawlers, little, yeah, little caterpillars that eat leaves that just defoliate ash trees and box elder trees and elm trees, and they eat just about anything. And it's been really bad the last two or three years, especially in central North Dakota, hasn't been quite so bad in eastern North Dakota. And I expect those populations to tank, hopefully this year, maybe in 22. Joe, let's say an arborist comes to a homeowner and they offer to treat their trees for emerald ash borer. Would you recommend they do so prophylactically? Not unless EAB is within 30 miles. Right, yeah. Save your money, people. Can you speak a little bit more about those parasitoids? What are they and where in Minnesota are they being released? OK, let's see if I can get those photo the parasitoids. The parasitoids. Spatheus, a tannicolus and Oobius. There's no common names. They go by their scientific names. And the Oobius, I can't remember which is which in these photos, is an egg parasitoid that the insect lays its larvae there on the lower left. The Oobius lays its eggs on the EAB eggs and kills them that way. And the Spatheus and a tannicolus, they infest EAB larvae. And I know they've released them in the Twin Cities area. I'm not sure where else they've been released. These there was a lot, a lot of testing before these were released. These were from China or well from Asia, I should say. And there was a lot of testing before these were released to make sure that they were specific to EAB. And the long and short of it is they were specific enough to EAB. They might attack our our native bronze birch borer a little bit or our two line chestnut borer, which hits oak trees a little bit, but not much. They really focus a lot on on on on EAB. Oh, how far can an emerald ash borer travel from tree to tree, for example? Tree to tree, it can travel as far as 10 miles. Usually it's no more than a half a mile, though. Well, really one buck and go 10 miles. It can, you know, under the most extreme circumstances. Well, they did a good win. Well, there's that, too. But they did this research using flight meal where they put a tether on an insect and then blow air across it and make it fly and see how far it goes before it finally gives up. Up to 10 miles. OK, that's pretty far. Yeah. Just have a question. It's just a general question about ash tree in the backyard. The ash tree's got a lot of suckers and should that be a concern? It has a lot of small branches that are dark and fall to the ground whenever there's a big windstorm. Well, it sounds like there's general dieback on that tree. And yeah, I would be concerned if the little branches are dead. They're not certainly not helping the tree. And if the tree is producing suckers from the stem, that tells me that the top, the crown, is either dead or highly stressed. So yeah, I would be concerned about it. So maybe this person can send you a photo of the situation to get you a good feeling for the. They should contact the county extension agent first. There you go. OK, contact your local county extension agent. Send them some photos so they can get a good looking at the entire tree, including the environment where it's planted. Joe, do the parasitoids survive winter in North Dakota? Would they survive winter in North Dakota? Or do they release them every year when they do that in Minnesota? It's those two aren't mutually exclusive. They do survive winter. There's that spathious. There's actually two species of spathious because there was one that was not wasn't cold hard enough. So they went back to Asia and found a different species that was more cold hardy. And yes, they they can survive and and the populations build up. So there's this balance between parasite and EAB. But they do keep releasing a few more every year just to help build the population. It's kind of like stocking fish. OK, sounds good. You know, some of them are going to survive. Some of them are going to not get caught. And yet they still need to stock and add some more. Yeah, it sounds good. Maybe that's not a great analogy. I'll work on that. OK, OK, there's no more questions. Joel, thank you for your presentation. And thanks for going to us off to a great start tonight. OK, OK, thank you.