Feds getting ready to treat trees around Faulkner Hospital with insecticide

Die, bug, die! Photo by Jenn Forman Orth.The US Department of Agriculture says it wants to inject trees up to a half-mile away from where Asian Longhorned Beetles were found last year with imidacloprid, a pesticide that kills not only beetles but bees.

USDA and state and city officials plan a public meeting on the beetles - which were found in six trees on hospital grounds - on April 28, at 7 p.m. at the Faulkner Hospital Auditorium. The current quarantine zone - in which any woody material has to be ground up - extends into Roslindale and Brookline.

According to a USDA report released last month, the insecticide would either be injected directly into trees or poured into the ground right around them.

The Arnold Arboretum has used the insecticide in the past to treat hemlocks threatened by wooly adegids and birches attacked by borers, the department says.

The Jamaica Plain Gazette reports the arboretum supports the anti-beetle dousing plan. The SafeLawns Foundation, however, opposes putting insecticide into the ground around trees because of the risk to bees.