My daughter and wife and I have been doing field experiments and stewardship for years. We have experience in marking and treating honeysuckle. In late May of 2014 the three of us treated and paint marked about 250 honeysuckle shrubs with 17% Garlon4 in mineral oil. We had a control of 180 live shrubs. The photos below are from a few of our scientific escapades.
After that May basal bark treatment we returned in September and tallied our results. The painted stems made the tally easy. We had 100% death to the Garlon4 treated stems! This was true in all size classes from dinky to huge honeysuckle. We did not spray an excessive amount. All dead. We can exclaim that when honeysuckle are leafed out in the spring you will get excellent results treating them with basal bark herbicide at that time. It works!
Two more posts to go on basal bark.
grassland restoration network 
I have been reading all the basal bark treatment successes regarding honeysuckle. I have no doubt that this method of killing them works. I have questions though about its effectiveness in some situations, and I have questions about follow up after all the honeysuckle is dead.
I am a contractor that kills a lot of honeysuckle. In fact sometimes it seems as though that is our main activity most of the Winter. We never basal bark honeysuckle. We physically remove and burn the brush and treat the stumps with a 50% solution of element 3A. Sometimes the stands of honeysuckle are so big and dense. The question I have is how practical if at all is it to basal treat honeysuckle when you can not physically get to the stumps, or because it is so dense you almost can not see the lower part of the plant? The other question I have is about follow up. Once your honeysuckle is dead will they not be in the way for follow up on attacking new emerging plants? In fact it maybe a hindrance because you will not effectively see the new emerging plants nor have great access to them. New plants of honeysuckle will definitely emerge underneath your dead honeysuckle. In addition how does fire travel through the newly killed area? Depending on the density how does sunlight reach the ground layer? This is important for seeding of native flora to build up fuel to carry fire. I mention this because of experience with fire and follow up control of honeysuckle. My experience is that once the honeysuckle is removed, it can effectively be kept in check with fire.
Good comments. I have several more posts to go on honeysuckle, two on basal bark, one on foliar, one on mowing, and one on pulling it. If I put all those topics in one post nobody would read it. For those big thickets of honeysuckle I mow them down with a brush mower. All the shrubs will re-sprout, so then I will treat each plant. If the area is ruderal I will boom spray it with foliar. If a good area I will spot spray with Garlon4 in mineral oil. More to come. Thanks for comments.
Angi, THis is one of Bill Kleimans with the TNC strategies for Honeysuckle control. He had three or four others. I think he would be a good addition to the Invasive species conference.
On Wed, Dec 14, 2016 at 6:59 PM, grassland restoration network wrote:
> Bill Kleiman posted: “My daughter and wife and I have been doing field > experiments and stewardship for years. We have experience in marking and > treating honeysuckle. In late May of 2014 the three of us treated and > paint marked about 250 honeysuckle shrubs with 17% Garlon4 in” >