Sonny 1950: Fear not, your trees are in no danger. The sticky stuff is honeydew from yellow aphids. You should be able to see the aphids on the underside of leaves, but they could be high in the tree. Many people experience this problem with pecans and complain when their car turns into a lolly pop. It's not that serious although heavy numbers can reduce pecan yield and quality. A more serious aphid is the black aphid. It can partially defoliate the tree. These usually occur in small numbers on leaves in the lower canopy. If you see leaves with segments of the leaf turning yellow, you may have this pest. Commercial growers spray for this one. For what it's worth the "nut" part of my handle references the 20 yrs I spent in pecan variety development for Texas A&M Univ. The Fruitnut

Hopefully none of the canopies can be reached from other trees nearby. If this is the case, you at least have a chance to put a dog next to the trees or a trap on the trunks or a barrier of some kind there at the trunks. I can't really give advice because I've not been able to keep them from my little trees. The only have a couple pounds of nuts in each, but they have already cleared the first 4 of all nuts before I could get them, and have started on 5 or 6 more of the later maturing trees.

There are 2 potential answers. 1. Most likely this is an off year for your tree. Pecans are a masting tree (bear fruit irregularly). This is natural and happens in the wild. The purpose of this is that by producing a large crop, the tree makes more seed than the predators can eat (crows, squirells, weevils) so some is left for new trees. The next year there are no nuts and the predators starve and the population lowers. Often all the trees in the forest will be on a similar schedule and one year there are few nuts, the next year plenty. Even good pecan growers struggle with this problem, and it is the focus of much pecan research. 2. The other potential problem is pecan scab. This is a disease that affects the leaf and shucks, producing black velvety spots. If the young nuts are heavily infected they will drop off in the summer. In a wet year this disease can devastate your crop. If you see a lot of catkins on the tree in spring, there were probably female flwers as well and if you then don't have nuts something like scab took the crop. If you don't see catkins then the female flowers were probably never there and it is an off-year for your tree.

I've been spraying with water based 'Cutter' concentrate and it seems to kill individual webs, but the pecan tree and others around it are LARGE trees and I can only spray with a narrow jet stream about 20 feet tops and the webs seem to be taking over. I don't really want all this toxic stuff everywhere because i have a small pup and goldfish in the pond. Any ideas and..what is BT? Oh yeah, the pond attracts wasps, but they seem scarce this year and we also have doves nesting all over the place, but we have been feeding the doves a diet of bird seed. I am thinking if we stopped feeding them seed they will go after the worms. Any ideas?