Thank you for appreciating their job skills.

Keep the food supply and they will stick around. Gently mist some plants to give added water without knock everything off and they'll be happy and multiply.

But check ant populations, they save aphid eggs in burrows overwinter and place on trees since they "harvest" the dew aphids produce as food. I watched a trail of ants transporting them up to the top leaves of my dwarf apples before the ladybugs hatched. Leaves were curling being sucked dry so I picked and crushed and set out bait stations.

Ladybugs can only eat so much and most often they need a helping hand, also, ants farm aphids, a infestation can get out of control very quickly.

Sometimes ants can ruin a newly grafted scion by sucking the juices and drying up when buds are just opening...then I confront them with putting on masking tape, inside out.

Konrad, for masking tape alone is not enough ( could be poor quality tape). I have to smear Tanglefoot on the tape, too.

Lone, wrap trunks of all trees that have branches touching. Ants have walk over from another tree if you wrap only the targeted tree.

Perhaps not for you but this cheap tape from the dollar store seems to work best... must be sticky and this color might help also, but then...this is only a side branch about 4 foot up the tree.

The battle is more complex than I thought. I have ants in all my new fruit trees. I had heard of them farming aphids yet didn't know what that meant til now.