webworms

It's fall, and the insects are gearing up for survival of the next generation, laying eggs, and planning their winter homes.  Fall webworms are showing up everywhere.  They hang out together, spinning webs around leafy branches, so they can much on the leaves with the sticky web to protect them from predators.  Also inside the webs are eggs, waiting to hatch.

One way to deal with them is spraying with a combination of lime sulphur and horticultural oil in the spring before the leaves appear.  That covers and kills any overwintering insects or eggs.  But my crab apple tree is about 20 feet tall, and there is no way I can spray it anymore.

By the time it looks like the picture above, the only thing to do is to cut off the branch and dispose of the caterpillars.  You can douse the web with gasoline and set fire to it, but that seems like overkill.

I put water in a bucket (or in this case, a wheelbarrow), squirt dish soap in, and then soak the web-covered branches, making sure they go under the water.  The soap will cover the bugs' air-holes, and kill them dead.

The crabapple branch was incredibly hard to cut (the wood is tough) and I was very proud of myself when finishing that job, only to find a new nest high up in the tree a few days later.  I am admitting defeat.