Question
Hi Jim,

We live in a townhouse in Connecticut and have a very large white pine (about 100 ft tall) behind our unit.  We have been living here for about 4 years and have noticed since day one that this exudes a lot of thick white sap that literally looks like bird droppings. Some of the branches were pruned before we moved in.

We've had a couple tree care people over to look at it, one said he thought it was infested with insects and thought it was dangerous. Two others didn't mention mention insect infestation but also thought it was dangerous being only 5 ft behind our deck.

We were exposed to the remnants of Hurricane Wilma last year.  I thought the tree was swaying an awful lot for winds that weren't more than 40 or 50 mph.  My question is do you think this tree is in danger of coming down if we are exposed to a hurricane of cat 2 or 3, as there are predictions of a major hurricane hitting the northeast this summer?

Answer
Sounds like borers are attracted to the old pruned limb sites and are entering the tree. The tree will heal itself or you can where you can reach spray these areas with an insecticide for borers, check with your local garden type store for a borer insecticide for trees. I would not be concerned about the hurricane problem there, I live in Alabama and the coast is hit with winds sometines as high as 130 miles per hour and we still have pines along the coast. The important thing is to keep the tree healthy--fertilize it once a year. Here is a web site that gives information on fertilizing a tree.
http://www.ext.nodak.edu/extpubs/plantsci/trees/h1035w.htm