The question I've been hearing the past couple of weeks is, "What are these white things floating around in the air?"
I saw them all last weekend at home. This past week, I saw them floating outside my office.
They are Asian woolly hackberry aphids, small white insects that come off hackberry trees (or sugarberry) and seem to float in the air. You may see them even if hackberry trees are a quarter of a mile or more from you.
It seems like they appeared almost overnight, but populations have been building all summer. It was just last year that we had another fairly large infestation. Prior to that, 2006 was a big year.
The first major infestation in Augusta was in 2001, when there were so many of them it looked like it was snowing every day. What's interesting is that this exotic insect was first found on this continent in 1996 in North Augusta.
Many people mistakenly called these insects whiteflies. Whiteflies can also be common right now on gardenias and anything in the privet family, which includes ligustrum. But Asian woolly hackberry aphids affect and come from hackberry trees only. If you find them on other plants, it is only because they have landed there.
Hackberry trees have light-gray bark with narrow, corky projecting ridges that are sometimes reduced to wart-like projections. They are plentiful in the woods and often on abandoned sites around town.
Aphids suck the juice out of the leaves and secrete sticky honeydew on them. The parasitic fungus sooty mold then grows as a result. So you have a black, sticky mess on hackberry trees and on any plant or item below them, including cars or patio furniture.
The insects have several generations per year, so they can become abundant by late summer.
Ladybird beetles eat these aphids, but the best way to control them is to cut down the hackberry tree. You'll never have to worry about the aphids again, but you may also lose valuable shade.
The second option is to hire an arborist to spray the tree. You get an instant kill, but this is impractical if you have large trees and live in subdivisions with houses all around.
Another option is to use the insecticide imidacloprid, which is sold as Bayer Advanced Tree and Shrub Insect Control. This is applied as a drench on the ground around the tree. The material takes several weeks to make its way up the tree, so the downside of this is it's too late to be effective this year.
Make the application in the spring, shortly after the leaves come out on the tree. Killing the first generation can go a long way in preventing a population buildup during the rest of the summer.
Imidacloprid is supposed to last one year, but for certain trees, particularly large ones, you might put out the first application in the spring and follow with a second application in late summer. But again, it is so hard to predict in advance how bad the infestation might be because it varies from year to year.
Don't overlook small hackberry tree/bushes, as they can come up everywhere near the hackberry tree. Cut them down or spray with the Systemic Insect Spray.
Your last option is to do nothing. The aphids will not kill your tree. It's just a matter of how tolerant you are of the black, sticky mess all over whatever is underneath or near the tree.
Sid Mullis is the director of the University of Georgia Extension Service Office for Richmond County. Call him at (706) 821-2349 or send e-mail to smullis@uga.edu.
The Augusta Chronicle ©2010 Morris Communications, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Back 
fun factoid of the day - the woolly aphid is also known to many southerners as "fuzzlebutts"
neem oil mixed with dr. bonner's soap works as well. you can even add a little hot pepper to the mix.
So glad to see this article. I was wondering what they were. Thanks for the info.
And now we know.
Several varieties of plants were brought to North Augusta from Asia back then maybe these guys hitched a ride to Georgia Avenue?
Thanks for this article, they ARE all over the place, especially my backyard.
I think the black fungus is more harmful that the author makes it out to be. I have a line of gardenias in my yard and those aphids flock to them. This year they have stunted growth from being covered in that black fungus. We have keep our property free of these nuisance trees, but it is tough to control the aphids when neighbors won't do the same.
You can buy cartons of ladybugs. Let 'em loose. They'll do the job and they're cool to look at when they land on you and crawl around.