Honeydew on Trees

There are times of the year when cars parked under certain trees get covered with fine droplets of a sticky substance. This is especially noticeable around oaks and tuluptrees in the spring and pecan trees at almost any time. The leaves of sugarberry trees are now covered with this sticky substance, called honeydew. Honeydew is a sugary secretion from chewing or gnawing insects that attack certain trees. The insects derive carbohydrates from the saps of the trees and then secrete the honeydew. There is enough sugar in honeydew that honey bees will collect it and bring it back to the hive. The honeydew is mixed with enzymes in the bee’s honey gut and chemical changes start to occur. If enough of these sugary insect secretions are brought into the hive, a form of honey, which is also called honeydew, is produced.

Click on the photo and you can see the discolored, shiny, sticky leaves of the sugarberry tree. The tree is infested with white flies, the irregular white spots on the leaves. As the white fly consumes the sap of the hackberry tree, it produces the sticky honeydew showing on the leaves. On the left side of the photo is the acorn-size mud bottle nest of the potter wasp, a native paralyzing wasp. Potter wasps capture beetle larvae, spiders, or caterpillars, paralyze them, and place them in the mud cell to serve as food for a potter wasp larva. The potter wasp lays an egg in the cell with the paralyzed provisions and then seals the mud bottle. The developing potter wasp derives nourishment from paralyzed insects or spiders; and the adult wasp derives nourishment from flower nectar, as do honey bees. It is thought that Native Americans based their pottery designs upon the potter wasp nest bottles.

--Richard