MSU Extension Christmas Trees

Hello and welcome to the MSU Christmas Tree Webinar Series. My name is Bill Lindberg with MSU Extension. We will begin our presentation shortly. I do want to let growers know we do have restricted use credits for those that are watching this webinar live. Credits can be earned from the following states. Michigan, Indiana, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. When prompted during the webinar, please put your name, your license number, whether it is a private or commercial license. If it is a commercial license, please add your category as well, to the chat box. If you have questions during today's webinar, please put them in the Q and A section. The MSU team will help to answer some of those questions throughout. And we will also have a question and discussion section at the end of today's presentation. So the presenter for today is Dr. Deborah Mccullough. Dr. Mccullough is Professor in the Departments of Entomology and Forestry at Michigan State University. Her research focuses on the ecology impacts and management of native and invasive forest insects. With that, I will stop sharing my screen Deb and I will turn it over to you. All right. How's that? Are we good, Bill? That looks good, Yeah. Okay. Excellent. Well, hello everybody. I hope you're having a great day in either eating your lunch or getting ready to eat your lunch or maybe you just finished up. As Bill said, I'm Demac. I work with a number of different forest insects. Lately, I think the past 20 years almost everything has revolved around in basic forest insects. Which can be depressing but also certainly from a scientific perspective. Pretty interesting. Balsmoliadlgit is not something I thought I was going to have to deal with. My goal was to get through my career without having to deal with either Asian longhorn beetle or Balsamoliadlg. And last fall, some infestations of Balsamo delgid were discovered in Michigan. Over the last few months, I have been delving into just about everything I can find that's been written about Balsamoadlgid. I will acknowledge right now, I am not the expert on Balsamo Deg. I've tried to pull things together and figure out what might be helpful and what is of interest to me. At least if you're from the southeast part of the country. You probably knew Jill's sidebottom who was at NC State for many years and ill. She was a bona fide expert on Balsamo Del. And then she went and retired. Making use of some of her information, some of the stuff from Washington State, Utah has some good information. If you're new to Boston, will dilg well, we're going to learn together if you have a lot of experience dealing with Balton, Willa Dilg in Christmas tree fields in production. At the end of this, we should have some time for questions and for discussion. I'm not at all opposed to people helping me out a little bit more. I thought what we would do is think a little bit about what an adulgate is. I teach a class to undergraduates, forestry majors, mostly seniors, And I often speak with people that are forestry professionals or maybe arborists, that kind of group. And I've heard Adelgis pronounced all different kinds of ways. I think there's some uncertainty as to what exactly an Adelga is. Real quickly here, I thought we would talk about Adelgaz a little bit. Adelgis are like the country mouse to their cousin, the aphids. Okay, if you know a lot about, or you know a little bit about aphids, then you understand what adulgs are. But there's some really interesting differences between aphids and Adlgs. They are both really small little insects and they both have the same mouth parts. They don't bite or chew on their host plant. They pierce into the tissue of the host plant and they suck. We say they suck, but what they're getting is the liquid stuff that's in the cells that's full of nutrients and so forth. If you look at the back end of aphid under a microscope or maybe you have a really good hand lens. There's like these two little duly exhaust pipes that come off the back end of an aphid, and these are called cornicles. For many years, nobody knew quite what cornicles did, but it turns out that's where the aphids excrete a pheromone. You can see these little drops here. What aphids are usually doing with their pheromone is releasing an alarm pheromone. If you've ever looked at aphids and you maybe messed with them a little bit and you see them all drop off the plant or drop off the tree to the ground. That's because somebody produced the alarm pheromone and they're all reacting defensively. Then if you look over here at a delgits, they don't have anything. Quite so evolve, they're just like this little purpose blackish roundish ball. If you ever get a chance to look at one feeding under a microscope, you pull the wax away. They're like a little muscle that just constantly is pulsing. They suck, sucking, sucking, really good little suckers, but not a whole lot of other distinguishing features you can see. We'll see another picture of this too. This is the mouth parts. This is the stylet that they actually insert into, through the bark, into the tree. If you have had aphids either in your garden or on trees, you know that they will produce lots of honeydew. That is actually something they're excreting. That's a waste product. They're sucking a lot of sap. They're processing that sap through the digestive system to get the nitrogen and the good nutrients out of that sap. Then what they excrete is just basically sugar. Water sap has a lot of sugar in it. There's a lot of liquid they don't need. And you can see this little ball of honeydew. This is the Ta, that's like the exhaust pipe. Okay. They're pushing this out of when there's a lot of sooty mold coming out of aphids. Black sooty mold is going to grow on it. And it might be on a sidewalk, it might be on the trunk of a tree or other leaves might be on the vegetation under a tree. This, I think is a cool little fun fact and there's a really good picture of it. This is an aphid here, and you can see it's excreting a drop of honeydew. This ant is tending these aphids. What they do is the ants will protect aphids from a bunch of different kinds of predators, mostly insect predators, but sometimes even little birds. The ants will stand up and wave their arms at the answer sugar halos. They like to feed on that honeydew, and so they will protect the aphids many times. They actually pat the aphid on the rear end and get it to produce the honeydew so that they can feed on it. Unlike aphids, Ags do not excrete any honeydew, nor do they secrete honeydew. Instead, they secrete white wax filaments. They come off as almost like threads of white wax. All these I put in a couple of other adulgids that you might be familiar with during their lifespan. They have pores on their bodies as they are feeding. They are dealing with that excess sugary sappy stuff by producing this white wax that eventually covers their body. You see this if you cut open a coolie spruce gall on blue spruce, for example. In those little chambers there are white little adelgids making little tiny bits of wax. If you have coolies on Douglas Fir, you're familiar with these little balls of wax. That's actually the little adelgid, and certainly hemlock will, Adelgid will do the same thing. Aphids tend to be free living throughout their lifespan. They hatch from the eggs, the immature stage, what we call the nymphs. These insects don't have larvae, they have nymphs, that's the word for the immature stages. They are mobile, they'll walk around As adults, they'll either be able to walk around, or sometimes they have wings and they can fly with Ali. There are a few species that have multiple generations During the growing season, at least one of those generations of the adults will have wings and are able to disperse by flight. But if you look at North America, the two prominent invasive adulgiates, hemlock, oli diligent, and Balsalliodlg. They have only one stage that is mobile, and that's the very first stage that hatches out of the egg. And we call those crawlers if you've dealt with scale insects, for example, same idea. These little, tiny, pinkish things have little tiny legs and they move around. Eventually, they're going to settle on the tree and they're going to insert their mouth parts through the bark into the tree. And once they do that, they will never leave that spot again. This is a funky thing that is always a little bit mind blowing every time I think about it. There are aphid species that give birth to live offspring. You can see in this picture up here, this is a aphid mother, and she's giving birth to a little baby aphid there. You see down here, she got a couple of little baby offspring there. That's called vivipary. There's something that's even more creepy than that. It's called ovovivipar, that's where a lot of eggs form in the abdomen of the mother. Then at a certain point the eggs hatch and those very young first in star first stage nymphs burst out of her body. That's the end of the mother. And then the aphids all go off and do their own thing. The delgan don't mess with any of that, they simply lay eggs. They're not ever going to move. Their mouth parts are embedded, so they lay eggs and they lay the eggs basically under their body at the end. And under their body it's surrounded by this white wax. That's why we call the white wax ova ova for eggs. It's a really nice way to have protection from desiccation, from predators and so forth. Finally, aphids are very successful in an evolutionary sense. There are more than 5,000 species globally and 1,350 different species of aphids that we know about. In North America, pretty much every plant and tree you can think of has one or more aphids that will feed on it. I put just a couple of examples in here. We had huge infestations of beach aphids last summer. We call them the Boogie Woogie aphid, because if you mess with them with your finger, they actually will wave their little tails and do a little dance. We won't look at it now, but if you go to Youtube by promise you'll find lots of videos of that. Whereas the delgians, yeah, they did their thing early evolutionarily and then never bothered to try to branch out and diversify. A grand total of about 50 species all in the Northern hemisphere and they only feed on conifer trees. I think that's just amazing. I guess they're pretty good at what they do and they just specialize on this one type of feeding and don't bother trying to mess with the hardwood trees. Getting back to balsam woollyga then, it is obviously not native to North America. It is native to Europe. Okay, The first report of it came from Maine and that was in 1908. And at some point they had to have traced that back and tried to figure out when it came into the state and into North America. Basically, it was in nursery stock, infested fir trees that were imported from Europe. Probably Germany, but could have been somewhere else as well. In 1910, Nova Scotia reported it. That's not surprising, you're just talking about a northward spread there. But then in 1928, California picked it up and then Virginia in 1957. Now you're down getting into where there's frasier fur down in this area, these little yellow spots here. Idaho in the west picked it up. Utah has it. Now we're up to by 20 2012 states and eight Canadian provinces. You can see a little spot up here. These different colors here represent different genetically different populations of Balsamolia Delga which will come back to. But it could be that there's either multiple introductions that have happened or there have been mutations followed by probably human assisted transport of adelgus from different areas into new regions. What happened to my thing Here? There we go. This is just another map that shows the counties that are known to have Hemlock, Willa Delgd. They're going to have to update that map because as of last September, October, it was picked up in Masaki County. Surveys just in January picked it up in western Clare County. And then in Oceanic County, which is right along Lake Michigan, it was picked up on Frasier for Christmas trees. It's likely that all furs can be colonized by Balsamoliadlgit only furs. But there isn't anything that is native to North America that is truly resistant to Balsamoliadlgit. We talk about vulnerability and that's the likelihood of the trees either being killed or seriously injured when they become infested. It's interesting, I started with European fur here. This is obviously native to Europe where balsamoliodelgid comes from. It is quite resistant to balsamoliodlgia. It can be infested for years and years. And what happens is that when the adelgid start trying to feed on the tree, and they poke their little mouthparts through the bark, there's actually a layer of cells that collapse, and it creates an impenetrable layer. The adelgis can't actually suck sap and good stuff out of the cells there because the tree is defending him and responding to that attack. But then you get into North America, there's no co, evolutionary history between our furs and Balsamoliadlgid. If you look at relative vulnerability to balsamoliadlgial, frasier are very vulnerable. Highly vulnerable white fur or concolorfur as some people call it, little bit less vulnerable, can tolerate balsamoliadlgid for a longer period of time. If you look at some of the western furs, the vulnerability varies there as well. But it's never a good thing when balsamoliadlg shows up. In terms of Michigan specifically, we have a lot of balsam fir. You can see in the map there. That green area is the native range of balsam fir that doesn't count anything that's been planted either in landscapes or sometimes up north, it's used as an ornamental tree. Over 2 billion balsam fir trees in Michigan alone 365,000 acres of forest land, it's not solid balsam fir, there's patches clumps of balsam fir, but it often mixes in with other species, including some of the hardwoods. I think most of you folks know that Michigan is a top. Christmas tree producer number three in terms of trees sold and there's a big mix of retail and wholesale farms. I thought I'd put this map up here. This is the native range of Fraser Fir. It's very restricted, but in terms of Christmas tree productions, there's a lot of frasier fur in Christmas tree farms in Michigan, as well as other states. Wisconsin, for example, can concolor fur. And certainly balsam fir, particularly in the upper peninsula Michigan are also very popular thinking about the insect coming back to what it's going to do and how it handles itself with the trees. Like I said, it's a sat feeder. This is a really nice picture. It was taken by folks in Utah through a microscope. The wax has been pulled away from the little adlged body. This is the stylet that is going to go through the bark and go into the tree. It's going to go down probably about as far as where that text comes up. They're going to pierce the outer bark and get into the layers of cells. A few layers of cells just below the outer bark called cortical parnchamacells. That's what they're actually going to feed on. Again, I think I'm going to keep saying this because it's just so, so unique to some of these adelgids. As they feed, they are producing these filaments of white wax. You can see these little strands of wax that are coming out of pores, all over the body of the Adelgid. Nothing really wants to eat that white wax so they don't have a lot of predators and natural enemies. I thought I'd show you this just to make it clear as to where they're feeding. Keep in mind these are tiny little insects. This is an actual cross section from a young tree where you can see xylem tissue is here in the middle you can see old New Zum tissue is going to be more active in terms of transporting water. Zyleum is all about carrying water from the roots up the trunk, out to the branches and the foliage in the canopy of the tree. Epidermis will turn into bark, eventually periderm. Here the flom is outside of the zylum. Flom is what is going to transport the carbohydrates and the compounds that are produced up in the canopy of the tree. They have to come from the foliage, down the branches, down the trunk and out to the roots. To this is helpful sometimes. It's easier to simplify it and show you better what I'm talking about. If you think about a tree, if you cut a cross section of a tree, you're going to have wood sapwood, right? You have some hardwood here in the middle that probably isn't doing too much. Then you have rings of early wood, and the early wood is light colored. The late wood is going to be dark colored, and that's what makes a tree ring every year, that's actually L. Okay? Zylum tissue is carrying the water. It's also what we call sapwood. Then outside of the zylum, you have this thin layer of cells called cambium. And they're going to produce zylum to the inside and they're going to produce floum to the outside. Again, flom, this area is called inner bark and that's what's carrying nutrients down the tree. Outside of the Floum is the cortex. That's where these little Adlgids are poking their mouth parts through the bark and getting into the cells. In the cortex they don't want to feed on cellulose or ligna and they want that good stuff that's in the middle of the cells that has all the nutrients in it. Like I said, wax builds up every little spot of wax there is an adulgid. It can be on the branches, it can be on the bark. They can also feed out on the shoots, down near the buds, according to one publication. When you have a density like you see here on this tree, on the trunk, you can have 100 Adlgids per square inch, which is just mind boggling. Now in terms of the life cycle of Baltimoadligen, most places seem to have two generations. We're hoping that there's two generations in Michigan. We don't know for sure yet looking at literature that comes from some of the Rocky Mountain states and from places like Nova Scotia that maybe has a climate somewhat similar to Michigan, they have two generations a year. But in North Carolina they will go through three and sometimes even a partial fourth generation because you have a warmer and a longer growing season there it remains to be seen yet we're going to try to track at least a few trees and watch the delgus on them over this growing season. And see if we can figure this out in terms of life stages. There's eggs, okay, you can see a little picture here. The eggs hatch and they become crawlers. Crawlers technically are first in star nymphs. Okay, nymphs is a good term for all the amature stages, the first in nymphs feed. They're going to grow a little bit, they have to molt, they'll feed some more, grow a little bit, molt again, feed some more. After completing three stages, three stars, they become adults. Crawlers are basically first in star nymphs and then they'll go through a couple more in stars before they become adults. What is happening right now is that we have overwintering nymphs on the tree. These little overwintering nymphs, they're cool to look at under a microscope. If you get a chance, they have some white wax that runs around the perimeter of their body, the edge of their body. And then they have this white mohawk that goes right down the middle of their back. It's like a little white line of wax. These overwintering nymphs have already settled and embedded their mouth parts into the bark, and they're just hanging out. They're just passing the winter in not too many more weeks. As the sap starts to run and the buds start to swell, these nymphs are going to start feeding. They're dormant. They're estivating right now. And they're just waiting for the tree to start preparing for spring, moving all that good stuff that's been stored all winter out to the new buds where the new needles are going to grow. Let's see these nymphs again, they're going to feed and molt. Feed and molt, and then feed and molt. And that third time they're going to become adults. Those adults are going to lay eggs. Okay. This is what the egg clusters look like, if you take them out from under the wax, out from under the female. Adlgent Balsam will adelgid much like hemlock will Adelgid reproduce parthenolgenetically. What that means is that there simply are no males. They don't bother with mating with males, there aren't any males. They simply produce eggs that are genetically identical to themselves, and all of the sisters are genetically identical to each other and to their mother. Unless there's a mutation, mutation is probably responsible for a good part of the genetic variation we see in these different populations. In North America, an individual female can lay possibly as many as 250 eggs. But usually when people try to count these clusters of eggs, it's more like 100 to 150 eggs those are going to hatch. It takes a while. Everything I read indicates that the eggs may be hatching over an extended period that can run 2-3 to four weeks long. That typically complicates efforts to control an insect like this because you don't have a real distinct peak when you have a lot of crawlers out and about. You can have eggs hatch hatching over at least a month, we get these little crawlers. And you got to admit, that's a cute little thing. There you can see there's 123 pairs of little tiny eyes. The legs, the red spots are the eyes on this little crawler. These little crawlers will move about on the tree. Sometimes they tumble and fall down. Sometimes they try to climb up or out to the ends of the branches. We know that they can be blown in the wind and we're real sure that they can be carried by birds in particular. Maybe other animals, but certainly birds. And they can be taken to another tree, and if they land on another fir tree, now that tree has become infested. We also worry a little bit about crawlers. If they're active and moving about, it's warm enough, it's at least 50 degrees or so, there's a chance they can blow off cut Christmas trees or logs or some other material that's being transported. Then again, you have to worry about whether or not they might land on a uninfested fir tree. If you have balsamoadlgent in your field, you have to keep in mind when the crawlers are going to be active. Because when the crawlers are active, it's not that difficult to end up with some wax and some crawlers on the sleeve of your jacket, or maybe down on your boots or down low on your pants. And then you go to a new field that hasn't been infested yet, and you might be carrying those crawlers in there. The crawlers, they move about, they find a good spot to settle. When they settle, they stick their mouth parts through the bark that could be on the trunk, it could be on branches. You can see in this picture down here trying to find my little cursor down here, you can see they're off on the branches, it can be so typically down near the buds and they will put their mouth parts in and then they actually transform their body changes to some degree. They lose their legs, those little tiny legs just fall off. They don't actually go through a true molt, which is unusual. That's not how things usually work. That's not how Hemlock, Adelgid for example, does things. But once they settle, put their mouth parts in, then they estate. They go dormant for about three weeks. It's like, wow, that was so much work. I'm just going to sit here and hang out for about three weeks. At the end of that three weeks or so, they become active again and that's when they start feeding. This is the second generation we're on now and they're going to begin feeding sometime in mid to late summer. I've tried to figure it out, I'm guessing it's going to be somewhere around mid to late July, maybe a little bit earlier, maybe a little bit later. They will eventually mature into that second generation of adult females who will lay eggs again. And we'll have some more crawlers that will settle, pierce the bark estate transform. And those will be the nymphs over winter. That's what I'm hoping it's going to be in Michigan unless the third generation occurs, in which case this process is going to go on throughout the growing season. Now in terms of what Balsamoliadlgi does to their trees, gout shots. Gouting is a real unique symptom of balsamoliadlgid feeding. What happens is where they stick their mouth parts in on a shot, Okay? In the nodes, in between the buds. Their saliva actually triggers a response from the tree. The tree is trying to defend itself, but they haven't evolved with Balsamoliadlgit and they're just not very good at it. What happens is you end up with this gouting response. The twigs will swell. You can see where they're swelling. No new buds will form. The needles will either dry or they'll drop off. Typically, no new needles get produced. And obviously, this is going to affect the ability of the tree to photosynthesize and to grow, and the vigor of the tree. Lots and lots of pictures of gouty twigs. Okay? This is going to be on Balsam fir, it's also going to be on Fraser fir. Most of the furs that you're going to be growing in your Christmas tree field, you can see here some deformed needles there. These little, what would have been shots? They've lost all their needles. This is really pronounced gouting here again. That's on balsam fur. You can see down here, I believe this is frasier fur, some dead twigs. Over here you see some dying needles, have a couple shoots that don't have any damage at all, and that's because the adelgis aren't feeding in that area. What this translates to, early on, at least you can have the shoots will start to curl a little bit, they're becoming deformed. The terminal leader, you often notice this funky terminal leader here, the trees become flat topped. The terminal leader gets to be weak. A lot of times instead of being upright and looking like a fir tree out, it will be at about a 45 degree angle. Obviously, that's something that would have to be corrected along with controlling the asalliadlgitsl. The balsamoiadlgence will feed on the trunk or branches, I should say, if they're feeding primarily on the shoots. If they're doing this kind of stuff and feeding and making gouty twigs. A lot of times it takes two to three to four years before you see the gouting. You may have balsamoliadlgiits at a relatively low density feeding for a couple of years before the gouting starts to appear. If they are feeding that way, eventually they're going to get onto the bark. But once you start to see a lot of gouty twigs like that, then typically the trees are going to die within two years, three years, perhaps four years. When you have the balsamolidlgs feeding on the bark, on the trunk or branches, again, they're getting their mouth parts into those cortical parncuma cells. That's not good for the tree either. The saliva that they're injecting into the tree to help them pull that sap, all the nutrients in those cells out of the tree is going to again trigger a response by the tree. It's going to affect the zylum tissue, the tissue that carries the water up the trunk and into the canopy and out to the limbs. One of the things that will start to occur is this reaction wood. Okay. Because the zylumjt, it's like the tree is having a bad allergic response to this feeding. One of the things that manifests that response is reaction. It's called Rapholtz, I think that's German, it's really fun access to good moisture, but the moisture is just not able to move up the tree and into the branches, and into the foliage. As you might imagine over time, this is going to affect the vigor of the tree, it's going to affect the growth of the tree. You start to see some dead shoots, and eventually these trees are going to die. It's not something that's going to happen abruptly. It's not going to be an acute type of situation. It's the trees get less and less healthy, the growth drops. Some of the trees, perhaps that aren't doing well for other reasons are going to be probably the first to die. Keep in mind that Balsamoliadlgid can infest everything from a seedling up to a mature or even over mature fir tree. You can see in that picture from Connecticut, there's saplings, there's very young trees that have been killed by balsamoliodlgid in the foreground, according to some of the information that comes out of the West. Definitely if the trees are having problems and growing in a poor site, or they're stressed or have some other issue already, are not very vigorous, they're not going to handle Balsamoliadlgd very well. On the other hand, what they see in places like Utah and Idaho is that often it's trees on really good sites, high site index that are well spaced. The stalking is appropriate and they tend to be attacked first, perhaps because of the spacing and because of the wind carrying crawlers. I don't really know what that is. But they may not die as fast, but they tend to be attacked early on. And you do start to see mortality begin and then progress through those stands again, It's not a quick death. The trees are just going to all die because Balsam showed up, but they're going to die eventually, over time. Most of them you can see there's some frasier furs in this slide. Young trees, a lot of dead Fraser standing there. The Klan's dome in Smoky Mountain National Park is the poster child for by Fraser. Fir trees have been killed. The, and I showed you that little map of the distribution of Fraser Fur, it's native range which is not great. Balsamolia delgit is really bad for frasier fur. It's now listed as a species of concern, which is on the ladder to becoming a threatened species, and heaven forbid, perhaps an endangered species. I will say though, if you look at this picture here, under these dead overstory trees, you have an awful lot of young Fraser fir coming up. Those trees may in fact be infested, whether they will survive and become overstory trees. Again, I guess that's yet to be determined. This is another really famous picture. This is Clingmans Dome in Smoky Mountain National Park. Those dead trees that you see, those would be overstory Fraser fir and you can give credit for all of that to Balsam willa delgit. When you think about an even an invasive test, you want to know what natural enemies are available, what's going to feed on Balsamo digi, what might keep the populations relatively low? That is not a good story either. There are no parasitoid insect parasitoids that are known to attack balsamoliodelgid nor hemlock, wole digi for that matter. We can scratch those off. Classical biocontrol refers to going back to the native range of an invasive insect pest, looking for the natural enemies that feed on that insect in its native range. Rearing them, bringing them in, and then releasing them with the idea that they will become established and start to control your target pest. And a lot of effort went into this with balsam olia diligs. Still some effort, not a lot anymore. The heyday of this biocontrol for Balsam Willa deg was from the early '30s up until about 1969. At least 66 different species of insect predators, mostly little tiny ladybird beetles, lady bugs, whatever you want to call them, were collected, They were reared, they were introduced into areas that had Balsam alg. They even went into India and Pakistan, which I'm not sure. I think it might have something to do with the whole colonial thing. As long as they were there, they might as well look for some predators of the del. They brought all these things in. For the most part, it was unsuccessful. Only six species ever became established and even those didn't become established in all the sites where they were released. Three of them were little tiny silver flies that actually get in weight into that waxy over sac and feed. Three were tiny little ladybird beetles. None of them have ever shown the ability to control Balsamolia delgad populations or to slow the rate at which trees become infested, or decline or die. Not a lot of optimistic things there. In terms of managing fir trees and will adligid in Christmas tree production. Prevention is always the golden option, right? Try to keep it out of your fields. Do what you can to keep it out of your fields. I think if you're somebody that needs to buy seedlings and you're buying seedlings, fur seedlings from states that have Balsam Wollaligd. Be really careful. I say that because we have pests that are federally regulated, where USDA Apis, the Animal Plant Health Inspection Service, mandates that there are regulations, there are quarantines, and they try to minimize the risk of moving an invasive pest into an area that has not yet been colonized. Well, balsamoiadligent has never been federally regulated. States can implement their own external quarantines and try to prevent infested fur material from coming into the state. That works to some degree. There's a couple problems with that. Other states that already have at least a few counties with Balsamolialg, they don't have any good reason necessarily to go do surveys to see if Balsam Del has spread the distribution data, the map of where Balsamoadlgi is established, everything that is known to be infested is certainly infested. What you don't know is if there are areas, counties for example, that have become infested recently, that nobody has detected or reported or is showing up on a map, I would just say be cautious about this Anytime you're bringing seedlings in, if you're somebody that brings in B and B trees or even bear root trees, Balsimlyadlgi can colonize all of those kinds of trees. Be real careful about pulling those in then. Once you have Balsamoa delgd may have it in one area but not necessarily other areas. Be real careful about taking it with you on equipment, on your clothing, on your boots, anything like that. This is frightening. Some of the information that Jill Sidebottom has put out is that in North Carolina, crawlers can be active from April to October. That's the whole growing season and then saw if that turns out to be the case in other states. In Michigan in particular is where I'm interested in, but certainly other states. That means you have to be aware of balsamoiadlga anytime you're in an infested field, and especially if you're going to an uninfested field afterwards. Same thing with moving fur nursery trees, cut trees, limbs, any material out of infested fields. You don't want to be doing that if the crawlers are going to be active. Winter is going to be the time when you do probably a lot of that work. If you have to use some type of an insecticide product to control balsamoliadelgid, timing is going to be really important that wax, the more wax that is around an adelgid, the less effective any insecticide product is going to be. What you want to do is time a cover spray. But when you have either crawlers or early early stage nymphs because they don't have wax, and they're going to be much more vulnerable to whatever product you're spraying on when you have overwintering nymphs like we do in Michigan Right now, we're going to be looking at timing. That first spray right about at bud break. You don't have to kill every crawler. They're going to settle, they're going to become those very young early in star nymphs. They're not going to have a lot of wax initially and that's when they're going to be vulnerable to your spray with the second generation. That's going to be tougher to time. You're probably going to have to be out in the field if not once a week, at least every couple of weeks, to see if you are finding crawlers, to see if the eggs are hatching. If you can plan your spray around that. In terms of products, it depends on what you're interested in, what kind of products you typically use for your Christmas trees. You can control a lot of these adulgents with horticultural oil or insecticidal soap, especially if you don't have very many trees that have to be treated or sprayed. Horticultural oil, the idea is that you're basically suffocating the insect. The horticultural oil has to surround, engulf the insect to be effective. That's hard to do unless you're using it in a backpack sprayer and you're real confident that you can really get all those adlgens are on the branches in the bark and down low on the trunk of the tree and so forth. So insecticidal soaps that they can work. But again, you have to completely surround the insect. What the soaps are doing is breaking down the membranes, the epidermis of the insects. And it's just messing them all up physiologically. And you can't just put a little bit of spray on it, you really have to engulf the nymphs. The nice thing about things like oils and insecticidal soaps is that they're not going to be harmful to whoever is applying them, be harmful to the people working in the field. They don't persist. You either engulf the insects or you don't. Soon as they're dry, that's it. They're not persistent anymore, The adulgus will not develop resistance to, these are physically affecting the insects, not chemically. You're going to have virtually no harm to non target insects. Anything that can walk or crawl or fly away is going to do so. Next step up would be some of the organic pyrethrum or pyrethrin products. These are insecticides, broad spectrum products. They'll kill pretty much any insect that comes into contact with them, but they don't last very long. They're going to be effective and persistent, and toxic for a few days, and then they're going to break down in UV light. If your timing is really good, say in the spring, you might get real effective control with some of these products, then we take another step up. Pyrethroids, I would say what most Christmas tree growers would be using to control balsamoadlgia. These are synthetic versions of pyrethrum, but they last much longer than the organic versions that are actually derived from chrysanthemum flowers. They're going to be more toxic. They're not selective. They're broad spectrum. Any beneficial insect predator or pollinators that happen to come into contact with these products is probably going to get killed. You have to think about resistance too. This is an insect that has at least two generations a year, often on the same tree. If you're spraying those trees repeatedly with the same kind of chemical, in this case it would be pyrethroids. You can end up with some resistance, That can be a concern. That's something to keep in mind. It's a good reason not to spray trees if you don't have to spray them. If you have a really loaded up super infested tree or a little clump of trees, you might be better off just culling those trees out and burning them. There's another product that I wasn't aware of, I haven't worked with Christmas trees much in a number of years, but it's been nolide sold as Savanto Flu. Pi Furon. Yeah, it's a completely different chemical. It has some benefits in that it's translaminar, which means when you spray it on the foliage, it actually moves into the leaf tissue to some degree, which allows it to be transported through the shots and out to the tips of the shoots. It should be really good at killing some of those adlgas that are feeding. It is expressly marketed for controlling aphids and sat feeding insects. And it is more selective than pyrethroids. It's not going to have nearly as much impact on most of the insect predators. Beetles for example, or pollinators. But again, you have to be thinking about resistance. If you're spraying over and over and over again multiple times a year, that can be a problem. Another issue with these products, pyrethroids in particular, is that you can end up with spider mite problems if you're going to use those. If you think that balsamoliodulgd is really causing problems, you need to control it, that's fine. But then watch for spider mites so that you can get after those before they build up and really start to cause damage. I do believe Tall Star will control spider mites. I'm not sure if it controls all the stages of spider mites, but if you can get balsmuleodlgid and control any little spider mites that might be there, tall star may be something to look at. This is less for Christmas tree growers and more for people that might be arborists or even forestry people. What we use to deal with hemlock will adelgid in forests, in landscapes, and so forth are systemic neonicotinoid products. This is immatocloprid and dinoteferon is the active ingredient in these products. They do work really well on hemlock as well as pine bark, adelgid. Maybe not all the sat feeding insects. We're talking about products that are typically applied to individual trees. These are not things that you necessarily apply with an air blast spray. You either apply them as a soil drench right around the trunk of the tree where it goes into the ground. Dinoteferon, in particular, is very water soluble. You can actually spray the lower portion of the trunk, we call it a basal trunk spray. It will penetrate the outer bark, get into the zylm, and be carried up into the canopy of even the tallest tree. Or more commonly, we trunk inject this stuff, either imminocloprid or occasionally dio tefuron. These are products that they're really effective for. Hemlock will Adelgid, whether or not they're effective for Balsamoliadlgid, I couldn't find anything that was very definitive. I think it's somebody needs to look at this. A couple of problems with this. When you have Balsamoliadlgid that is feeding on the trunk or the branches, it is triggering that response. And those changes in the zylum cells, the cells that have to carry the water up the trunk and into the canopy. Once those cells are injured, once you start having the reaction wood or the compression wood form, that is going to limit and restrict the ability of the tree to carry water. These insecticides, these systemic insecticides like this move in the zylum with the water that is going up the trunk. If you can't conduct water, there's a very small chance that you're going to be able to conduct immolate in particular or even notef I wasn't able to find much on the efficacy of either of these compounds. For Balsam Woodgate. It's unfortunate, they work great for Hemlock will Adelgid, but maybe not so much for Balsam will Adlgi. Perhaps even more important than which product you choose is how well you apply a cover spray for Balsam. Absolutely have to get good spray coverage. That means the trunk, the base of the tree, the branches, that's where the Adlging be, that's all that area you need to get the spray on there. Some of the suggestions that came from Jill and some of the other folks would be to increase the volume of spray. Either drive more slowly or just put more spray out. Come at the trees from two different directions to increase the chances that you're going to effectively cover the tree. You may have to spray fewer rows at a time. That might mean putting a new lane in between rows of trees. You can butt prune the trees to get the branches up off the ground and that lets the spray get into the base of the tree, the trunk of the tree. If you have tall weeds, they're going to interfere with a spray. You might have to do either mow or do some weed control if you're trying to do this efficiently with something like an air blast sprayer, A high pressure sprayer nozzle is going to be probably the best bet. But an air blast sprayer can work as long as you're making sure that you get really good coverage. This is something that I'm just tossing it out as a possible option, I think in terms of targeting the overwintering nymphs and getting a spray on right about at bud break, that's pretty straightforward. I think we can all time that pretty well. It's that second generation and heaven forbid, possibly a third generation that are going to be more difficult to time a cover spray appropriately. Quick and easy I would say is quick, but it's easy. It's definitely cheap Option for monitoring the appearance of crawlers, of these indulgence, these tiny little pinkish insects, we've been using sticky traps. You can buy these from all kinds of IPM suppliers and so forth. They're cheap. It's just a piece of cardboard. It usually has a little bit of wax on it, so it holds up in the rain fairly well, at least for two or three weeks. One side of the cardboard is coated with clear, sticky stuff that anything that lands on that sticky side is going to be captured. What we've been doing is getting a bundle of survey stakes at Home Depot or Lows, and you can pound a survey stake in. And then we use a little push pins and you can put out one of these sticky traps and check it periodically, once a week, or just on the weekends, whatever works for you. The problem is these crawlers are really tiny and you're going to probably need a microscope. And you have to look at the sticky card and look through all the crud, the dried needles. And you'd be amazed how much insect life is out there that ends up getting caught on these sticky carts. But once, it's not that hard, it's not rocket science to learn to recognize these little adulgd crawlers. And if you see them, okay, we know the crawlers are active. I might not load up the sprayer today or tomorrow, but I better do it within the next 57 days. I don't know about this wrapping shoots. This is a good way to scout for things like spider mites, but that might also be helpful. You're basically trying to knock off tiny little insects onto something white and ideally sticky that you can take back and look at under a microscope. One point we try to make with the delgids is that any sat feeding insect, whether it's a aphidlgid or a scale, will benefit if you apply fertilizer with nitrogen to those trees. When you give them a dose of nitrogen, heavy fertilizer, that nitrogen goes into the sap. It's not going to change how the insects feed. They may actually develop a little bit more quickly, but what it will do is lead to the females producing more eggs per female. The idea is to get the Adlgis under control, and then once you have that done, you can come back and maybe think about fertilizing the trees and helping them regain some of that vigor. I was thinking, trying to think of what might be confused for balsam willa delgit on fir trees and I didn't really come up with very much if it's a fir tree. There's only a few things that we see very often up here. Balsam twig aphid is real common. It's a native insect. It's going to feed on the swelling buds and as those new needles start to emerge, that's the generation of balsam twig aphid that's going to be a problem. You end up with the curled needles. The needles don't grow as well, but it's not at all, It doesn't look at all like balamliadlga, spider egg sac. That's a little white thing. You're going to have just a few of those. When you touch it, you immediately know it's that spider silk. You're not going to worry about that. Spruce budworm worries me because that's a native insect. We're just coming to the end of a big spruce budworm outbreak in this region. It's been going for at least six to eight years, especially in the upper peninsula of Michigan. This is a really damaging insect. The caterpillars feed on the current, your foliage. Very wasteful feeders. You can see they clip a lot of needles off. Often the balsam fir trees that are 40 to 50 years old and older, we may see 80% mortality of those trees. Spruce budworm, and having balsam adelgid now overlapping is distressing for me. Then again, spruce budworm outbreaks are spaced apart. Usually it's about a 30 to 35 year interval between outbreaks. Hopefully some of the furs that haven't been killed will recover before Balsam uliadlgi gets there. I would also say we tend to get a lot of oak skeletonizer in northern lower Michigan in particular. And there's a lot of areas where balsam fir and some of the oaks are not too far apart. Those little tiny mass will spin cocoons. And you'll have these little white cocoons on the needles, on the shoots, sometimes on the bark. But never in the numbers that we're going to see with Balsamoliadlg, the skeletonizer cocoons. They're long and slender and they just really don't look at all like balsamoadlgit those of us that are in Michigan where Balsam adelgid is still a really new thing if you have Christmas trees or even if you have property with balsam fir on it and you think you may have balsamoliadlgid. We need you to report that there's a couple of different ways you can Google missen. It's the Midwest Invasive Species Information Network. Miss makes it very easy to file a report of a suspect tree. Ideally, you have a couple of photos that you include there. Definitely you want the date and you want the location. The Michigan Department of Ag and Rural Development, the Mars. They are also taking reports between Missen and Imdard. If the pictures look like Balsamoliadlg, somebody is going to come out and check it. That's all I got. I'm wondering. Thank you. De was a great presentation. Yeah. Riley, do you want to go ahead and launch our poll questions for the audience? We'll do a post session quiz here and see what we've gained. Eureka? I'm starting the first one. All right, So true or false? Does Balsam diligent consume needles on fruit trees? We'll give it a minute here as our answers start coming in. And then just as a reminder as well, for those that are requesting UP credits, one of the requirements is that you do participate in our pools. You don't have to have the right answer, but you do have to participate, correct, Bill? Yep. Yep. Participation trophy for this one here. All right. Well, it looks like your answers have stabilized. I'll end the poles here and here. The results. It looks like 84% of our audience said false. They do not consume needles. I guess that would be probably the correct answer. We're not consuming the needles, we're sucking the nutrients out from the cells. All right, stop sharing the riley if you want to go ahead and host your second one. Okay, so number two. Which of the following are our hosts of balsimalia, diligent? So we have many different options here for you to consider. Again, just give it another minute or two here. These are people I can see are in the screen, okay? And we'll end the poll and cheer the results of this one. It will be just fir trees that will be for Bsmlialgck question there and all the above. Sometimes that can be misleading, okay? I'll stop sharing that. And then Bird, I guess if you want to go ahead and manage the Q and section and then just as a question or comment for growers, if you have any questions, please add them into the Q and A. And as I remember, this will be our point too, where we can add our restricted use pesticide information. If you are a grower in Michigan, Indiana, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania or Vermont, and you'd like to earn an RUP credit for attending this webinar, Please put your license, your name, your license number, your state, and if it is a commercial license, into what category it is, into the chat section and that's what we'll I'll take that information. All right, Deb. Actually, I'm going to start off with a question but it's appropriate with the pole still up the baldligll affect furs but only the genus B, Douglas fir would not be affected. That's correct, Bird and I probably should have mentioned that Douglas fir is not a true completely different group of trees. There may be other things to worry about with Douglas fir, but balsamg is not one of them. Okay. I just wanted to make sure people Yeah, we're clear on that. We did get a question earlier on. I think I might have gone through the chat and regarding the insect feeding. So once Algia has inserted his style, her style, I guess they're all females, right? Into the co do they move after that or for that individual? That's it. They don't get to move ever again. They are literally embedded, their whole head and mouthparts are stuck in the bark really. As soon as they embed like that, they're going to lose their legs. They have no way to even move around if they wanted to. They can't really withdraw their mouth parts and travel to a different location. They have to go with whatever they picked first. Okay. So we'll get some of the questions that came on line here. Will the hemlock move to furs? No indication of that. Hemlock will del doing a number on hemlocks over on the west side of Lower Michigan, but there's no reason to think it's going to move into furs. Let's see question. The white fur material covered the insect, Has that ever been analyzed to determine what surfactan or detergent might remove it? Insecticide might work better. Well, that's a really good question. It wouldn't surprise me at all if insecticidal soap would dissolve quite a bit of that wax. If somebody is thinking about maybe you'd go through with a soap first and then come back through an insecticide. That would be interesting to try. I really can't tell you yes or no, but it makes a lot of sense to me that that might work. You do have to get either you have to dissolve that wax or you have to really target the crawlers. In the early stage nymphs, there was some data where when they tried spraying adults with pyrethroids, pretty aggressive, broad spectrum chemicals, 60% of the adult adulgius survive those sprays just because they're so enmeshed in all that white waxy stuff. But that's actually a cool idea to try to dissolve the wax and then come back with whether it's a horticultural oil or an insecticide product. I don't know if it will work, but I think it's worth trying. How's that? Yes, sure. Regarding the balsam diligence that have been found here in Michigan, do we know anything about their origin? Are they from the east coast, west coast? You know, we don't at this time. And that the fellow that does that, his name is Nathan Hale and he works with the Forest Service, is literally the world expert on these kind of Alg. It would be worth talking with him and to see if he would be willing to do those genetic analyses. And just to see where the origins are. It would be interesting to know if the Alg we have in Oceana County, which doing the Michigan thing is over here along Lake Michigan, whereas the ins that are on Balsam fir. Are more up in this area. I don't think the wind necessarily blew them that far. I think that there may have been a couple of different introductions. Don't really know how or when the first detection of the Adelgis on balsam fir was on private property. The trees were planted 50 years ago. There's not a lot of access. Nobody's been in or out of there other than really the property owner. And he had just invited a consulting forester to come look at his trees and was thinking about a timber sale. And that's how that spot was detected. That one you think maybe birds brought it in, but where did the birds come from? Because that's a good three hour drive or 2.5 hour drive and I don't think birds are going to get that far. Carry and crawler. We may have had multiple introductions as well. Yeah, a question here about scouting which is good. Where is the prime area on the tree to be looking for Balsa will alto. I think that if they're just feeding on the shoots you might have a tough time finding them. I think anytime that you're in looking at your trees, whether you're picking out which ones you're going to harvest or you're doing some other type of activity in those fields. I would make sure that all the workers are trained to look for those gouty twigs. Show them a picture of what that's going to look like. And maybe you pick that up as early as possible. But really, if it's me, I'm already doing this when I'm out around balsam fir, I'm looking at the bark, I'm looking at the trunk. You might look down low on the tree. At the base of the tree, there's evidence that if it's really cold, it will kill some of the indulgence. But of course, everything that's under snow is going to be insulated. So you have almost no mortality, no winter mortality down low. Plus crawlers tend to tumble a little bit. It's not uncommon to have the lower part of the trunk be infested Pretty heavily. Pretty early on? Yeah. You're walking up and down the rows, maybe you're scouting for mites or some other insect or whatever Christmas tree growers do in their fir fields. I would just always be looking right, looking left, looking at that bark. The white wax shows up pretty well against the gray bark that you find on fir trees. That would be my guess as to how you're going to find it. So then we here in Michigan, has this been found in the landscape? We have there been fines in Michigan so far. There was an incident bill. Was that in 2022? I think I think it was in 2020, if I'm not mistaken. In the Rockford area. In Kent County? Yeah. Yeah. There was I think not very many trees. It was either six or eight fir trees that were pretty large that a landscaper, it's convoluted, nobody's quite sure how they got in there. The property owners purchased them at a nursery. We think the nursery people went down to some other state and brought some of those trees back. At any rate, they had a lot of hemlock or balsam, woolly indulgent on them. The trees were removed by the Department of Agriculture in late December, when it was cold and there was no chance of crawlers moving about, they were destroyed. Then they spent a lot of time over the next literally three years looking at any fir trees they could find in the vicinity and never found any sign of any other trees that were infested. I think that we can confidently assume that that infestation was eradicated. Haven't seen it on any landscape trees anywhere else. That area that Bill is alluding to, the Rockford area, is down by Grand Rapids. That's what, a good 2 hours or so from the nearest infestation in the Oceanic County infestation, again, unless there's somebody that's just sprinkling a delgids around, I don't think they were necessarily related. I think we've had more than one introduction question about control. Can you spray horticultural oil in March or April before bud breaks would also affects mites and aphids at the same time? You know, I think you probably could. You're going to need the temperature to be above 50 degrees. Otherwise it's oil if it's too cold. You know what oil does when it's too cold? It just gets goofy and it doesn't flow and it's not going to spread. Right, Bill, what do you think about that? Yeah, I guess I have no other comment than what you said. I'm not sure. Yeah, Yeah. I wouldn't try to do it too early. I don't know exactly where the person with the question lives, but around here, I'm thinking, yeah, sometime mid April. April on a fairly warm day like that, That's not necessarily a bad idea. Check your label. Read your labels. It's Paul Back. All right. Yeah, absolutely. And then you mentioned that there is no even though this is all over the place in terms of the country, there's no federal quarantine departing basal. Why is that? There's a there's never been a Federal quarantine for Himlock will elg either. I have my theories. I'm politically savvy enough to know not to necessarily share all those theories. I think part of it is that it's a really difficult insect to detect, and both of those adulgids are hard to find when they're at low densities. I think they should be federally regulated, but I'm not the one that makes those decisions. I think a number of states that have a resource to protect have developed their own external quarantines to try to protect the resource in their state and prevent infested material from moving in. I think by and large with nursery stock, there's a paper trail. A nursery produces trees, sells them to a buyer. There's a paper trail there. And I think where that system breaks down a little bit is maybe landscapers that are not certified nurseries that go through an inspection process. There's not necessarily a paper trail with those folks. And they get trees, they plant the trees out. There you go. We think that's how Hemlock Wiliadlg came into the state. I don't really know how Balsamo Dilg came into the state other than perhaps on seedlings that were purchased from a state that has Balsamliadlgi. Okay. So, you know, we're talking mostly about the situation in Michigan, but are there reports of Balsam diligent infestations in Christmas tree farms, other parts of the country? Yeah, certainly North Carolina. That's who I go to for all my information. Jill side bottom. And I'm sure there's a number of other people that are really well informed about Balsamoliadlgid. There just because Fraser fir is such an important species, there's an abundance of it. You're within the native range of balsam fir and a lot of those areas, yeah, that would be a big area. I'm trying to think of some of the Western states they certainly produce, they certainly produce fur Christmas trees and balsamoliadlgid will infest a lot of those species, virtually all of those species as well. I talked with Chill and granite Oregon state, and he said that the Baltima diligent is an area but just like they don't grow much Fraser further, so it isn't usually as big of a problem. It's not bothering the nobles, it didn't sound like it was bothering the tree species they grow. To the extent that Fraser fir is, I don't think it's as big a Christmas tree problem there, but certainly the fir trees in the forests, it's not a good situation in a lot of those states. Another question, what about the risk of moving or transferring some of the diligent on bow material we're shipping around? Yeah, I think that that's a concern. I've heard some rumors from some of the regulatory people that the regional plant boards may be looking harder at bow material and cut branches and that kind of stuff. If you have crawlers, that's certainly a high risk type of material. If you have settled nymphs over wintering nymphs for example, then I think it's less of a problem. Because again, they're not going to move, They're stuck there. And when a tree is cut or a branch, a bough is cut, that they're going to feed on it for another week, two weeks. But eventually it's going to dry out and those insects are going to die. But given what Gill has reported from North Carolina where you have crawlers that are active into October, we may have assuming that the Department of Bag in the state of Michigan wants to regulate some of this material, there may be some restrictions on when those bowls can be harvested and transported, if you're taking them into an uninfested area. That gets onto our next question too. A lot of people bring in pre cut trees to their farms. A lot of people are choosing cut, but they'll bring in pre cut trees. There's a, we have re wholesalers and so forth. We don't know p, where these trees came from. Certainly some of them could be coming up from North Carolina, places like that. People bringing in pre cut should be looking at their trees. Oh, yes. Please look at those trees. Yeah. You'd like to think that everybody's doing good pest management, good IPM and all that kind of thing. I think in a lot of cases that's true, but I also think there's some that they're going fast and they're trying to be as efficient as possible and keep their costs down. Well, you don't want to be the one that brings more Balsamolia del, any other invasive pests into a new state, Into a new region. That shouldn't be what anybody is about. And if they can trace it back to you, there's going to be regulatory aspects of that. Yeah, if you're bringing stuff in from other regions, other states, look at maps, there's online information about where these different invasive pasts are located, Hemlock, will Balsam diligent some of this stuff. Do your best to avoid bringing anything in that's not clean and really nice. Okay. Just a couple of comments here and from Vermont. They've had ballga for a long time. They see it on their matures. A question. Can anything be added to fertilizer to help control any systemic? Maybe we could add with our fertilizer. Yeah. I assume you're talking about the kind of irrigation fertilizer that goes through your irrigation system. If you're talking about fertilizer that's applied more as a granular, that's not that different than applying something like imminocloprid or dinoteferon. I think there you still have the issue of whether or not the tree can translocate it, whether it can move through those Ylm cells and get all the way into all the branches and where it needs to be. The short answer is I don't know. The longer answer is I'm not sure that's going to work very well if the trees are infested and have already started to sustain some injury. Yeah. In that case, the main thing would be to reduce your nitrogen rates or make sure you're not over applying would probably be the Yeah. Yeah. In relate to that. I've got a grower here thinks he has some gouty phraseor furs. So I mean, multiple things probably could cause that. What's the definitive way to look for Folsomligent? I'm not aware of anything else that causes gouty twigs, fir trees. I think that if you are seeing those swollen, goudy, malformed looking twigs and you're in a place that isn't known to have Balsam. A Delgada would warrant a report. Yeah. Yeah. Bill or I don't know if either of you guys can think of anything else that would cause there. I can't think of anything else that would cause that. I just also go out and look to see if you can see any of that way. Excretions from a adults prior. There's secretions, bilecretantxut. But yeah, Bill's right. If you're seeing gouty twigs, take a hard look at the trees. Back on the branches in the trunk and look down low, see if you're finding any white waxy material there. Even if it's just go twigs and you don't see anything on the bark, I still might suggest putting a report in through Missinor, through M Dart if you're in Michigan. If you're in another state, I'm sure there's a regulatory agency that would like to hear from you more questions about the regulation here. Does Mdard have a quarantine or any rule that requires specific items for incoming plants? So what's the rule on things coming into the state for the specifics on that? You'd probably have to ask Mdard, and Bill and Heidi might be able to speak to that a little bit more. I know that we have had external quarantines for quite some time period. Material in theory isn't shipped out of infested states or infested counties without being inspected or cleared by the state regulatory agency in that state bill or Heidi, do you want to comment on that? Yeah. I don't have too much more else to add outside of that. For the sites that were found here this past fall in Michigan that the M Dart officials are still doing their evaluations and further looking to see how far it may have spread. And I think they're going to base what rules and regulations they may create based on those findings. And we had a comment come in from one of the folks with the agency that said, yes, any furs that would be coming from an infested state would be inspected upon arrival in Michigan. Again, I will point out that that works for nursery stock, but it doesn't stop somebody from taking a truck down to North Carolina or some other state and bringing back material that doesn't necessarily get inspected. Again, just be really careful. And I was going to say to, to think about how small these insects are, so if you have a very light infestation, it isn't going to stick out like a sore thumb. As the infestation grows, more symptoms are seen. Yeah, absolutely. I should add, I was in a meeting with one of the higher ups from the Mdard group that deals with the plants and plant pest quarantines are this week. I think this week was there last week to conduct surveys. They were still working in the north central part of the state, looking at the Balsam fir up there and trying to figure out how far apart these investigations are up in that area. At some point, very soon, they're going to have to decide. My guess is that there will be some type of regulatory Action imposed. Probably with a compliance program, nobody wants to shut down transported Christmas trees necessarily, but we don't want infested Christmas trees or bowls, or logs, or any of that material moving around. I think that that's going to have to happen relatively soon because as you guys know, nursery trees, people are going to be digging those trees soon and moving them and planting them and so forth. It looks like the chat box Heidi and some other folks have put in the link to get to the balsamoadlgit external quarantine. If you're somebody that's thinking about bringing in any fir seedlings or fir trees, you're going to want to really look at that quarantine hard and make sure that you're following all the steps in that quarantine protocol. Okay. We also had a few questions that are interspersed here with the information in the chat, so I'll try to get to a few of these. For the fines that we had in Michigan, how significant was the damage, or does it really matter? We just don't want the thing here. How significant with the dame and the trees that were found here? Well, I would say I would say we don't really want it here, period. We don't want it at all. But it looks like we have it. My understanding is the balsam fir doesn't look bad at all, it just has a lot of Adlgids overwintering on the bark, which means that the fingers crossed, the trees haven't been infested very long. And then Bill, you were out in the Christmas tree field, what did you think? Yeah, the trees that I saw in the field in Oceanic County last year, they would be unsalable. They were heavily damaged. So they're of no value. Some of those pictures that I showed, actually quite a few of them. The trees that had the flattened up tops like that, those came from Oceana County field. Some of the trees that all over the stem overwintering and delgiz all over the bowl of the tree and some of the branches, you can see some dead shoots. Those came from that field in Oceana County. All right. I think we got through the questions. I did also see some kudos in their debs I was looking through. People enjoyed the presentation. Thank you. A good information, definitely something to keep an eye on. Here is a breaking situation, as they say in the news business there. Bill, you got things to wrap us up? Yeah, join us next week. We'll be our last and final webinar for this year. For anyone who wanted the RUP credits, Please put that information in the chat box. We'll see you next week at 12:30 I guess outside of that, I have nothing else to report. Riley or Heidi? Have you grabbed the chat box information? I will go ahead and save it quickly here. Okay. Yep. Thank you. Nice bidding. We've already got it. Okay. Thank you guys. So otherwise, okay. Well, very well. Thank you everyone for joining us, and thanks again. Db. We'll see you later. Yep. Thank you, Deb. A great job. Thank you.