CLOSED: Present from Lowes

This is a rose of sharon, purchase from lowes 2-3 weeks ago. Upon initial inspection, I didn't see any insects. It was isolated for the first few days but then we planted. Noticed a lot of ants on it the following week, didn't think anything of it. Because of the heavy traffic of cicada wasps in this area, I have not paid as much attention to it as I should have. I noticed some of the buds had what appeared to be eggs on some of the buds earlier in the week, but it seemed that the ants were quickly getting them. I thought they were helping. Today, I noted that they have all but destroyed the tree, and all the buds (more than 30) had these egg things on them. I've tried to research, is this an ant/aphid relationship where the ants are protecting the aphids? If so, how do I get rid of this? Any hope for the tree?? I've looked, don't have this anywhere else in the yard. The tree is on the fence that borders my yard from my neighbor.

Sorry for the poor quality of these photos. I tried to get as close as possible. The most visible is the brown like scales(?) that almost look like dried dirt on the underside of the leaves.

Ants protect a lot of the small honeydew producing insects. Many of these small critters have to drink so much plant sap in order to get enough protein that they are swamped with sugars, sort of like us trying to get proteins out of oreos. They have mechanisms to pump the sugars out before they get digested, which is the honeydew that the ants love. If you have ever looked closely at an aphid, it has what look like two little jets pointed toward the rear. These are cornicles and are where the honeydew comes from. Other insects such as whiteflies and blackflies can also produce honeydew, albeit it differently. Controlling the ants would mean the the normal predators and parasites could get to whatever is causing this problem. It could be as simple as putting a ring of vaseline around the base of the tree if there are no other bridges, like branches touching a fence, for the ants to travel on.

I can't tell from your pictures which pest you have and so can't help with a recommendation. Since it sounds like an infestation of some insect or another that is pretty advanced, it likely means the plant will need to be treated with something. There are a lot of good organic approaches to management of the smaller insects when only one or a few plants are involved. If one of the other DG members doesn't recognize this pest, a call to the county extension agent would be a good thing. A lot of them recognize the general groups of insects and some are really sharp at IDs.

FM

Thank you so much for the information. My camera just wasn't able to zoom in well enough to get pictures. I'd never seen so many bugs in one place, so I figured I was safe in the assumption that my options were to be very very aggressive or yank and burn. It's on the side of the house that hasn't had any insect damage to date (many wasps).

It took me well over an hour, but I removed all leaves that had any eggs on them, removed all the flowers and buds (more than 30) with eggs, and removed all leaves that had the yellow discoloring on top (with the brown dried stuff on the underside). Then I took great pains to spray the plant, top to bottom, every leaf top and under, completely with Bayer Advanced. I figured that the worse that could happen would be that the bush dies, which was plan "B" anyway. Just couldn't risk it spreading to my Gardenia and Peonies.

If I'd fully understood the role of the ants, I could have brought a stick bug or a lizard over. I entertained this idea briefly, but felt that there was far more than one lizard could eat in a year.

I checked this a.m. No new eggs (well, no eggs that I can see) and no ants. I'm going to keep my fingers crossed. The shrub actually looked rather perky. Let's see how it fairs the heat today.