Beegood- yes there seems to be a great deal more here also. With the new pesticide law in Ontario there is little the home gardener can use. they seem to be attacking stuff they NEVER went after before. I've had to do the "safer soap" several times and then spray the h*** out of the plants , sometimes only to find them back later. I sometimes wonder if spraying them only sends them off to their next meal at another plant!
Lois

I think it's called Safer because it's so safe it doesn't do a darn thing.Last nite I was sitting under the elm and later found some of my hair glued together. Once I saw what looked like tiny water drops raining down and it was aphid stuff. I think it's called honey dew. You're right they just move on to new plants . If my bees were that busy I would be up to my eyeballs in honey.

It's also called "frass". With a word like that, who can't like aphids?

Have you tried Safers End All? It's still available,I bought it at the nursery a while ago. I buy a bottle of the concentrate and keep it on hand because it works great. Just don't use the same product all the time as insects can build up a resistance. I alternate with Insecticidal Soap. By the way, does anyone know where I can get a list of the banned substances? Marg

My Manitoba maples are absolutely covered with aphids and the leaves are shiny with honeydew, as is anything below the trees. I have too many trees and most of them are too big to try and spray them down with water. I may have to resort to chemicals of some sort. The pods on the caraganas are completely full of aphids too. I don't think I've ever seen them this bad. Every time I walk outside my skin and hair are just crawling with green and black aphids. Marg, for the banned chemicals you could maybe try your provincial agriculture department, or your city's park and recreation department for anything that's just banned in town.

Connie

Try this for aphids. take a hose end sprayer--like what you use for miracle gro. Put in about 1/2 cup of mouthwash--the kind that contains alcohol. I use regular listerine. Add 2 teaspoon of your insecticidal soap add a drop of food color or a little bit of colored mouthwash put on the top and spray the trees. The hose end will meter the soap and mouthwash and you'll know when to add more to the bottle when the color changes to white. Alcohol is a bug killer too and added to the soap it helps is work better

I had aphids all over my crabapple tree one year. One spray with this and they were all gone

do not use rubbing alcohol in place of the mouthwash. Rubbing alcohol and the kind you drink or use in your mouth are 2 different things

Thanx for the suggestions but I think the storm we had last Sat nite seemed to have taken care of a lot of them. At least on the oak and elm ( what's left of it). The oak leaves are all turned over so they get hot sun all day and I think it fried a lot of them. No pity hear.

Are your bees milking these aphids or sucking up honey dew?
Some of the honey dew makes very nice honey.....like the famous forest honey in Germany, this honey comes
from a secretion of aphids taken in by honey bees.

Konrad

There's one HUGE basswood in my yard, and it's absolutely covered in aphids. If I let tools under the tree on evening, the next morning it'd be covered with sticky honeydew. I've never had so many aphids before...in fact I've never had them before (or not enough to notice). I did notice that I've had a few more ladybugs than previous years. I've found lots of ladybug larvae so I'm taking that they're doing their job feasting on the aphids.

oilpainter, if I don't have food crops near my tree, can I replace listerine with rubbing alcohol? I know they're chemically different, but I've heard of people dabbing scale with rubbing alcohol to kill them. do i need to 'wash off' the spray off the tree? And will the soap harm the lawn?

I have them really bad on my water lilies this year.
The koi and goldfish are not one bit interested in eating them either

I always have a lot of aphids since i dont spray etc and work half the summer- however, 3 years ago I planted sunflowers everywhere- the ants seem to prefer the sunflowers to keep their aphids, and I have very few aphids on anything else- a few on the gaillardia as well with ants, but tolerable-

Some poplar trees I have noticed a buzzing high up and noticed honey bees sucking up the dew.
Anybody had poplar honey?

Konrad