Emerald Ash Borer

Discovered in southeastern Michigan near Detroit in the summer of 2002, since then it has killed hundreds of millions of ash trees. The adult beetles are metallic green and about 1/2-inch long, only nibbles on the tree foliage causing very little harm. The larvae feed on the inner bark of ash trees, disrupting the tree's ability to transport water and nutrients.  

The first signs of infection in a tree is in the canopy include dieback, yellowing, and browning of leaves. Then, Increased woodpecker activity leads to large strips of bark falling off from the woodpecker eating the larvae. On the trunk and branches, look for small, D-shaped holes that are left by emerging beetles. When the tree's bark splits or falls off, S-shaped larval galleries may be visible and epicormic branches are also very common. Epicormic branches are the tree's last-ditch effort to survive by sprouting new leaf material to make nutrients but the problem is that the tree can't transport any nutrients. A photo gallery can be found on the bottom of this page showing the signs just described.

How will this affect you as a homeowner? Liability, dead ash tree become brittle after they die, this increases your liability as a homeowner. A dead tree next to your house, neighbors house, playground, sidewalk, driveaway, and many more situations and now this dead tree damages our property or neighbors property. Guess who will be paying that bill? Did you say, "ME," I bet you didn't, but the truth of the matter is that insurance companies will say, "as a homeowner, you neglected to maintain your property." Trees are the property owners' responsibility to maintain and take care of. So, there are a lot of homeowners that believe that their insurance will pay for damages of their dead trees cause and don't take care of them. Remember, when we spoke of your neighbor's property, actually their insurance picks up that bill if your tree damages their property. Neighbors don't like the idea that this could affect their insurance rates and pocketbook to pay for the deductible. This has the public turning municipality to solve this problem by issuing summon notices to homeowners with dead ash trees stating that they have a certain time frame to take care of the problem.  This can lead to the municipality hiring a company to remove the tree(s) at your expense or lead to the loss of homeowner's insurance.         

If you have ash trees on your property that have the signs as described above and it has not been treated, then it's too late to save your trees. Once your ash trees have died they become very brittle and dangerous to the point that they are known to fail on a calm sunny day. There are millions of ash trees being affected by the EAB you should act quickly to remove them, most reputable tree companies book up fast. Since there is such a high demand for trees to be removed there are many new tree companies popping up out the woodworks with no experience, training, insurance, and price gouging the market. As a property owner, you want to make sure that you hire the right company and locally with the experience and equipment to complete the job safely and efficiently. Give us a call, text, email, or book online. We look forward to serving you!