WD 40 is great stuff for lots of things but I don't think it would work in this case. It evaporates in a fairly short time leaving almost nothing behind. If you just want to keep them out of the tree Tanglefoot would work. They get stuck trying to cross it. Figs have thin bark so you would want to put the Tanglegoot on a paper band and tie or tape it around the tree. Tanglefoot can damage thin barked trees and shrubs.

Al......of course I do not recognize and would have no reason to care to much about earned titles. I have seen and been with the best and the worse Master Gardeners. If you name a hundred of any like title I would be able to say the same thing about them. I am a ROADS SCHOLLAR. I love to talk one or two on one standing knee deep in poison ivy. Going down the roads I still play "How To Tapes" on the way many times to meet someone else who will either teach me something or learn something for the time envested. We have been "HOW TO" teachers owning a school to teach true Antique Doll Restoration. We have done the whole national media trip. I personally still like it best knee deep in poison ivy to make a point. Now my wheels of life are starting down the last road. I may be able to enjoy the helping part of this site for some years. My hands no longer fit the hoe handle. I was one of the first in the country to begin using aerobic compost tea from proven tested base materials. For at least ten years now I have a standing offer to anyone and specifically the County Agents office and the Master Gardeners. It goes like this. The learning is relatively simple. I will give you hands on training in my back yard one on one or class you set up for your friends free. It will take one evening and one three hour following evening attendance with camera and note books. Coffee will be provided. To date no County Office interest, no Master Gardener Interest, no local garden club interest. Now is not that a pretty good status of the day report? On the subject of the Worst Master Gardeners meaning ones who may not have been in the "A Row" in class. My opinion is that just presenting a slide show with very simple subject matter looks good to entry level gardeners. The Master Gardeners courses that I have attended were not open to discussion or question. All materials originated at Penn State University. It was in one of those courses I learned that Comfrey was a horrible weed and should not be used. My Comfrey is grown in a K-Mart huge plastic containment planter. Makes enough for a whole year of Comfrey Tea on my property. I would offer that knowledge as a bonus to anyone interested in what has been happening here for over thirty five years. We are 98% organic here. We lie about the other 2% Our patch is now down to patio pots. They are in keeping with my opening statement in this paragraph.

andreajp, I have. It has been very hot here in NE AR and humid too, earlier than normal (as it was last year). I have had 'bugs' and fungus problems on groundcover(GC) roses, simplicity hedge (SH) roses, an azalea(AZ) and the garden tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. I used neem oil extract(70%) at rate of 1oz per gal at 11AM on the SH and GC & AZ too. It was much later than I had planned since sun was already on the plants for hours but felt I had no choice. No adverse effects from that -none I could see were burns. I really soaked the plants too. The BS was *gone* in a couple of days. I repeated the application a week later but much earlier in AM since the BS returned and have done it again. Unfortunately, I will be doing it every week and after every rain ... IOW, the plants don't seem to be sensitive. The garden tomatoes had (red) aphids and ithink whitefiles as well as some kind of fungus. The garden got sprayed in the (very) late afternoon. No direct sun on them but it was bloody hot. Plants actually looked like they perked-up a bit the next day and I could not see any red bugs! I have not seen any 'bad' bugs on the plants since then so no more spraying. ...but I will if I need to do it. I would say to not worry a lot about the heat but apply when there is not direct sun on the plants and use *only* the specified concentration as described by the label. Also, check the label to make sure your plants are listed as acceptable. One other thing: Growing plants in CA is diff' than here(I lived in San Diego for long time...) so if you feel a little worried, test on one plant without spraying the others. IIWM I'd pick the most infested for the test. Check the next day and if all is well, spray the others. Be sure to use a sprayer that will allow you to soak the plant and get *under* the leaves where the bugs are. HTHelps

I bet your Ant is really ANTS, Digit! I don't know about carpenter ants, but I have tiny black ants in my yard that "don't exist" from mid-summer thru fall, but every spring they swarm out of "somewhere," and there are millions of them "piled up" on the grass or soil! I'll look out the window and see what looks like a little "pile" of potting soil that somehow was accidentally dumped on the grass, and when I go out to explore the situation I discover it's a writhing "clump" of ants! And they ARE tiny, so there really are MILLIONS of them. They have so undermined the soil under my sidewalk where it meets my little front porch that the sidewalk is now at least a couple inches lower than it originally was, and it's now a BIG step to get up onto the porch! From what I can figure out, it looks to me like they "thrived" for years under---wait for it---the landscape fabric and rock mulch the previous owners had put in! When I was removing all that "STUFF" I found huge nests of them, at least I found the hundreds of tunnels that went down into the, apparently, HUGE cities! They had even eaten huge holes in the (nasty!) landscape fabric! And that stuff is virtually indestructible! When I first found them I thought: No big problem! Funny me!!! At first I just took household insect spray and saturated the tunnels and soil around them. They stood there, stuck their tongues out at me, and laughed at me! After a couple years I discovered that dumping (gallons!) of ammonia down the tunnels helped--kinda! Except for the time I poured it around some HOT stepping stones when I killed the grass near the stones, it seemed to actually help the grass and plants, so I kept pouring--but there were ALWAYS more ants! A few years ago I started using Bug-B-Gon Max on the, also large, omnipresent population of earwigs I've had ever since moving in here. For a couple years they were eating more of my veggies than I was! Since that stuff was working for the earwigs I started sprinkling it in, on, and around the ants and tunnels whenever I found them, and that, finally, seems to be really helping! I'll know more for sure in about a month when they should start Erupting again! I'm not expecting them to be GONE this year, but I do expect them to be noticeably "diminished!" Hoping in a couple years I'll be able to mostly rid my yard of them! If I were you I'd do some Serious Watching this spring, so if they really are there--in a huge city somewhere far down in the underworld--you'll find them as soon as possible and be able to start to "do something" about them. The longer they're there, the worse they'll be. I have NO doubt about that! Good luck, Skybird P.S. HI, BugDoc! Welcome to RMG! Nice to see somebody around here who might know something about "bugs!" If you have time, go to the Who's Here in 2014 thread and introduce yourself. We're glad you found us!