yeah…I pretty much agree, but you can always leave it short enough to slide up and check the bottom foot or so of the tree for borers. I originally planned to take mine off for the same reason, but felt the possibility of being damaged by a mower or something was probably greater than a borer attack, at least on pommes. Mine are painted underneath the pipe also. I probably should pull them off this summer when it’s good and hot (and the pipe very flexible) and have a look-see.
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I had a bunch of Woolly Aphids under my tree guards after the first year. Never saw them until I removed the guards. Not sure about the borers, I did not see any of those.
Would the absence of tree guards prevent woolly aphids blue, or does it just hide their presence? In other words, do you think tree guards may increase their likelihood or just make them more difficult to detect and therefore treat?
I’ve never seen any on or near my trees, though I have many times seen them flying about when I was a kid.
Apple
I believe it just hides their presence. Inside a warm black pipe may be an environment that makes them happy, but I’m not sure. I have not seen any since I took the covers off and kept the covers off. They form a white mass on the bark that looks like cotton
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Can’t you wrap the trunk with sticky flypaper and then put on the tree guard? Maybe apply pruning seal or paint before putting it on?
Has anyone seen problems with hardening off for winter? As in damage to the trunk from being kept warm late into the fall and then experiencing a hard freeze? Or damage from the pipe itself getting hot? I’m in central Kansas and we see 100F+ every summer.
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A local field tiling company had lots of that 4" black plastic drain tile sitting in their yard. They also had the same looking material in white. When I was there to purchase some of the black material I questioned them on what was the white tile for. They told me that the white was metric and came out of Canada. He indicated to me that the only difference was the color. Not sure if all dimensions are the same but would not matter if being used as tree guards. Bonus is you would not need to paint the trunks white. 
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The only downside I see with that is black plastic tends to be far more UV resistant. I will look into it though. Thanks for the tip.
A squirrel was eating a carved holloween pumpkin so I put a heavy coat of cayenne pepper on it. He ate the pumpkin anyway.
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Think i read birds are immune to pepper heat but not sure about small mammals. Have you tried ghost pepper or reaper powder on things?
I wonder if cayenne sprinkled on pumpkin is just a nice spicy dish to them vs extreme heat levels.
Grow some spicy peppers to turn into powder next year 
Don’t think it works for rats or mice. This video was from 2018. He’s done videos testing many other things like peppermint too. People keep buying into the products that claim they work. I grow lots of peppers and it does work good to repel ants.
Does worlds hottest pepper work on rats and mice?
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I have a similar climate and have used the black tile around hackberry, oak, honeylocust and a single kieffer pear (that received shade during the highest heat in the afternoon). I’ve not had problems for any of those cases. Eventually their diameters got big enough that I had to cut them off. But, I was afraid to try it on apples or pears out in the open where they might get super heated in the winter, or make a home for voles.
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I might be wrong in my thinking but I thought the white / black thing with tree trunks was to induce a tree to blossom later to avoid those late frosts which harm the fruit production. Seems like a black coating on a trunk would cause a tree to break dormancy early. Anyways, that’s why I painted mine white. Especially my apricots.
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