Until last year, I had never seen a bagworm. I wish I had still never seen a bagworm! They are horrible this year.
We thought they wouldn’t kill full grown trees/shrubs but could seriously damage young plants. We contacted the nursery about the Little Giants they planted here last year and they told us to spray with BT as soon as we see little yellow worms. We did and it may have helped but we’re picking bagworms off the Little Giants every day.
They’re in the magnolia tree, they’re on my squash. They’re on the bay leaf tree. They’re on the trim of the house. They’re on the plastic box that holds cushions for the outdoor furniture (though none of our outdoor furniture is put together yet).
They’re on cardboard boxes!
They on the arborvitae and have already killed some of them.
Can you see all of the bagworms? They look like little cocoons but there’s a worm in there. There are so many in these trees and this morning, even the big one in the middle was looking dead so Vince cut them all down, took them to the burn pile and burned them.
Then I looked over at the arborvitae on the corner of the house and they’re full of them too.
Vince came in, looked up what it takes to kill them at this point. The BT was before they started making and residing in their “bags”. He read about several things, went out and bought what he could find on the recommended list and has already sprayed.
These are the trees I really want to protect. You can see the corner of the house in the far left. That’s also where the less infested arborvitae are. I would be so sad to lose these big spruce trees.
I was picking as many as I could off the steps, the grill, the other plants and putting them in soapy water. This one was climbing up the side of the container. I was thinking .. that’s probably not where you want to go.
I was out helping Vince, thinking how brave I was picking up these gross bugs. Then Vince picked up this rock and yelled “GET BACK! Snake!”
That was the end of my help. I can’t be dodging all kinds of strange bugs and watching for snakes too. Worse than just any old snake, it was a little snake which means there’s probably an entire family of them out there and we’ve screwed up everything that was “normal” for them so they’re probably not happy.
Vince is still out trying to destroy the bag worms. I was out watering. I told Vince .. “you know . . some old people move to condos and stay inside where it’s cool all day.” He said “Yes but those people probably don’t have attack dogs for pets!”
We moved here. There was a yard man. He got paid annually. We started planting this and planting that and adding trees and he got frustrated with having to go around so much stuff so Vince said “Fine, I’ll buy a mower and cut my own grass.” I said “I’m not having a garden in Missouri. I’m not going to work so hard there.” Need I say more. We had one calm, fairly quiet dog. We added Oscar. Again . . no explanation needed about how much extra work that added to our day. We make our own lives miserable but . . we didn’t ask for bagworms! 🙂
Teri says
OMG how horrible! I have never seen those — really feeling for you 🙁
KATIE M PETERSON says
That is the ugliest thing I have ever seen. You are truly brave for picking them up. Gives me the quivers.
Mary A Crowther says
They are bad in Omaha too. The way we dealt with them was to get them sprayed by a professional. They love the pine trees
judy.blog@gmail.com says
They actually need to be sprayed weekly while they’re hatching out so it would be a bit more than we wanted to spend to have them done professionally. It seems everyone in the neighborhood is fighting them so it’s almost funny . . if it wasn’t so serious, to see everyone out spraying. We are using over a pint of concentrate every other day because we can’t spray all the trees/shrubs in one day and by the time we finish, it’s time to start over again.
They love all evergreens and I think the arborist told is there are about 130 other types of trees they will attack if they run out of evergreens.
Nelle Coursey says
I do not like those things!!
Rebecca says
Yuck!
How do you dispose of the soapy water full of (hopefully dead) bagworms?
Tracy says
–We have Oak Moths that, in the caterpillar stage, can completely denude a Live Oak tree in a few weeks. They are cyclic though, with some years terrible and some there is no visible damage. One year, they were so bad, I had piles of caterpillar frass to clean up, that was pretty gross. This year we had an infestation of two horned gall wasp, which forms tiny galls on the underside of the oak leaves. The leaves get yellow and tan dead spots on them, which makes the tree look terrible until the next year. The bag worms are worse though, yuck.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
I’d rather lose an evergreen than an oak. I guess there’s always something to torture us.
Vicky says
My dad’s neighborhood is in the country and has an HOA. They worked with a county extension agent and hired a plane to spray the entire neighborhood several times. That’s been about 20 years ago and he still believes it was the best solution. Those worms were killing everything.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
I would not do that because of vegetables growing. Even the chemicals that are supposed to be “safe”, I wouldn’t use. These things come back every year so we have to be proactive every single year to keep this from happening again.
Anne Kirby says
We have spotted lanterflies…they are new. The black and white spotted nymphs are everywhere, inside and out, and they hop. We live in the city so I thought we’d be fairly immune but judging by how many I see we will have dead trees all over come fall. Too many to kill and there is no spray.