you say its all over the plant ...

but unless i am mistaken.. is there only one in the pic... near dead center???

if so.. i would call that a scale.. pull it off and destroy it ...

it would have to be a severe scale infestation to kill a plant ... like literally covering the whole plant ... so i suspect this has nothing to do with a tree dying ... if it fact it dead.. rather than just late to bud out ... would need some pix of that tree if you want any more than that

and if its just a nub on the branch.. then its not a scale .. lol ...

ken

Looks like the out-of-focus branch to the right has quite a few more.

Thanks for your reply Ken, I also thought that maybe it was just being late to bud but then I saw the little bugs all over the stems and panicked because I have over 30 Japanese Maples in my garden and do not want to lose any. The first pic gave the best image of the little beast! The picture with this post is the tree that is most affected.

Yesterday, I went to my local garden center with the pic (i was able to blow it up on my phone) and they thought it was scale. I used Provado Ultimate bug killer and the little blighters seem to be loosening their grip on the stems and dying already. I hope this post will help others. Thank you to everyone that replied.