There is an interesting spectacle along Lumber Avenue at Third Street in Steinbach this week. A number of large elm trees have intravenous lines connected to them from adjacent tanks of liquid. Earl Swayzie of St. James Tree Service explains what they are doing.

"We're injecting these trees for the prevention of Dutch Elm Disease. The way the product works is, once it's in the tree and the beetle feeds in the tree, the fungicide prevents them from reproducing."

Swayzie explains the fungicide is pumped into the tree through a root flare. It takes from one to eight hours to inject about 30 litres of the medicine. He adds this process has a success rate of over 99 per cent in saving elm trees.

"We've done trees in places like Morden and at the Legislative building (in Winnipeg) for years and we haven't lost a tree we've worked on."

He notes there are a few trees around the tennis courts there that are already diseased and those will be coming down. The work they are doing now is to prevent the loss of any more trees. It costs between $200 and $400 per tree to inject the fungicide.

The fungicide is injected through a root flare.