My Live Oak has balls or cocoons around the branches with ants inside the balls. These balls vary in diameter from 1/2 inch to 1 inch. They have small holes just large enough for the ants to get inside and out. They are the color of the tree branch and have a shell thats crusted. The tree is dropping leaves. This has never happened before this year. The tree is about 6 years old. What to do? Herb

The balls are Galls, the result of tiny wasps that sting plant tissue to create a home for their young. Sometimes ants get into them. In and of themselves, galls are no problem. If you have a huge number of them, it may be symptomatic of the tree being in stress for some reason.

Live oaks drop leaves off and on all year round. Large drops tend to indicate stress, either from too much water (happens a lot, especialyl if the lawn is watered too often) or from drought if no water at all has been received for an extended period.

See if you can find out what id stressing the tree and correct that. If you can't find it, apply the sick tree treatment.

Thanks ENT for the info. I believe the tree is indeed stressed so will start to work on the problem with the tree treatment. Herbert

Hate to drag up an old thread.

My live oak has these galls. My trees health is fine. My concern is the ants. I don't know what kind of ant is attacking my tree but I want to know what to do about them and what kind of ant it is. They are red bodied and a black tail. When they crawl their tail sticks up and sometimes forward like a scorpion would but they are ants.

Again, the tree seems fine. But, I want to keep it that way. There are several hundred on this tree.

Ants don't normally cause harm to a tree. They are usually there because of some other pest (like aphids) that provide the ants with food.