Ants have never bothered my fruit and don't eat leaves. Could it be aphids curling your leaves?

Can't see any aphids. It's just the new growth on raspberries - except 1 mature leaf tightly curled on a blackberry. Some new raspberry shoots wilting too. I'm thinking that's the heat.

I also have something eating big holes in my blueberry bushes nearby. But this year is the buggiest I've seen and the cicadas aren't even out yet! Lots of ants (we had them swarming over some newly chipped branches we spread and now ant hills all over, no carpenter ants that I've seen but medium sized red/black and these tiny black ones, crickets, beetles.

I checked - no aphids. But I did put the borax/sugar water bait out.

New shoot that was really wilted was halfway broken - not sure how. But I may have a bigger (literally) problem than ants b/c I saw some disturbed areas in the mulch on that hillside and 1 long slide down the hill where it looks like a bear might have been checking them out (no disturbances in the beds or aisles between) and then slid down the hill.

Aphids suck plant sap from the leaves and stems. But they take in more sugar than they need and secrete the excess as honeydew. The ants use the honeydew as food and apparently protect the aphids from things like lady beetles.

Neither aphids nor ants eat plants.

I know aphids suck and ants farm them, I don't have aphids. I've read that ants don't eat leaves, but don't know what is making holes in my leaves and I'm sure they'll eat the fruit when it starts to ripen. Any ideas what might be eating holes in the leaves (big holes = caterpillars? Little holes flea beetles? Do FB eat berry leaves?)?

I hope the ant bait works before the raspberries ripen. I put some in my garden too, near but not right next to the strawberries.

And that tightly curled mature leaf on the blackberry had either a black egg mass or a bunch of poop in it so I snipped it off and threw it in the garbage.

I don't know what the ants eat. But I do know when they get on my jujubes they get on the flowers and the flowers turn brown and die. If I don't keep the ants out of my trees I don't get fruit.This is a fact that I have to deal with every year.

What are jujubes (I only know the candy) and how do you keep the ants off? Thanks.

I don't spray my tree I spray around the bottom of the tree with fruit tree spray jujubes are supposed to be spray free trees you are not supposed to have any insect problems. The ants I have are what I call sugar ants small black ants.They will get on all my fruit trees and go after the blooms. They do get on my loquats and try to raise aphids like farming a lot of the time I can spray with soap it will control the ants on loquats

Could be Raspberry Sawfly (really a wasp), we have them in California, not sure if you have them in CT or not. Starts out with small holes, then they will skeletonize the leaves. Hand pick off the larvae, they are easy to manage. Japanese Beetles will also eat raspberry leaves, but those are hard to miss. Ants do not eat plant leaves, so it's not ants, but as everyone else has mentioned, ants farm a variety of insects, aphids being one of them, and aphid damage usually appears as curled leaves.

Patty S.

Here is a link that might be useful: Raspberry Sawfly

Haven't seen JB (they really like blueberries too), in fact I haven't seen anything on the plants but these ants and now 3 caterpillars (1 on blackberry 2 on raspberries). I checked the undersides of leaves for aphids and I'm sure I would have noticed sawfly. Found a spider on one ;-)

I will keep an eye out for the sawfly larvae though. Will Bt work on those as well if it turns out the caterpillars are getting ahead of me?

I wonder whether what I thought was some small black wasp (pointed abdomen and wasp waist, but straight antennae) and exterminator said were male ants are sawfly? Entomologist from the state lab where I brought specimens 5/30 hasn't gotten back to me.

Deleted duplicate post

This post was edited by ajsmama on Sun, Jun 2, 13 at 19:43