When should a honey locust be pruned?
Prune young and dormant, and the specific job is eliminating codominant stems and included bark, because nursery-grown honeylocust routinely arrives with two or three competing leaders that split apart around year 25. Avoid growing-season cuts on a stressed tree: Thyronectria canker infects through wounds, and cultivar matters — Sunburst is the most susceptible, while Skyline, Imperial, and Shademaster hold up better.
Reading honey locust before you cut
One limb yellowing and wilting out of season while the rest of the canopy looks fine is the Thyronectria pattern — cut the bark on that limb and look for a sunken canker with reddish-brown discolored wood underneath. Whole-canopy thinning by August is usually mimosa webworm defoliation instead, and that tree will releaf next spring; the cankered one loses another limb every year until it is girdled.
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