O/T Bagworms?

Son has pods hanging from evergreen trees with a black worm in it, pod looks like an icle about an 1 to 1 1/2 inch long. i have never saw these before, bagworms i have had were in a cluster and i burned them with propane torch, we picked off half a 5 gal. bucket full. what is the proper name and is there a spray to kill them this time of year? . he set out 200 of these around his property, there about 6 ft. tall now.
this is in Indiana. Thanks for any help

Sevin works well on getting rid of them

I had them on a Colorado Blue Spruce. I went to Earl May & they sold me some stuff to spray on the tree & it killed them. I don"t know what the stuff is called. Deal with it & quickly or it will KILL the trees. Gerald

I have 160 cedars around my yard as a dust/noise from the road, don't have to look at the neighbor's junk pile live fence.

Most every spring the butterflies hibernate and not long after that the cedars are covered with them.....bag worms....get their name from the bag they make and hang it from tree limbs. They will definitely kill a tree and have done it to neighbors.

I use the Bayer (like in aspirin) brand multi purpose insect spray, blue and red container....at the big box store. You get a big container of it; quart or so, for about $13 and it mixes 1 oz per gallon....very inexpensive and very effective.

I bought a motorized sprayer for roughly $100 that I run off my riding lawn mower battery and can reach the top of the trees. The bayer kills on contact, doesn't wash off after dry, and is said to be good for 30 days. Works for me.

I also use it on mosquitoes on the patio and fire ants in the yard. Good stuff.

Mark

Sevin is no longer effective for bag worm. This time of year your best defense is to hand pick them. You can get partial control now if you spray a product that contains at least 7.9% Bifenthrin. Next March or before they become active Malathion is effective but unfortunately it will do nothing now. As always read the label.

You have to spray them late in the day when they come out. I now have them in my white pine also.

I don't know why you tagged this on my reply. What I said I use
works.

I spray mine usually in the mornings and they don't have to be out. I prefer mornings as I am spraying 20ish feet into the air and don't want the stuff all over me. Work with the prevailing wind and that's usually light in the mornings.

What I said I use will kill them the first time they stick their head out and get a bite of a leaf. I go by in a few days and test the bag. I pull it apart (hard to do with the silk lining) and look down in the bag. If I see a head I check in another couple of days. If not job is done. Only once have I had to go back and respray and that was when I got several butterfly migrations the same year and that was only on about half the trees.

Mark

(quoted from post at 21:30:48 08/05/13) I spray mine usually in the mornings and they don't have to be out. I prefer mornings as I am spraying 20ish feet into the air and don't want the stuff all over me. Work with the prevailing wind and that's usually light in the mornings.

What I said I use will kill them the first time they stick their head out and get a bite of a leaf. I go by in a few days and test the bag. I pull it apart (hard to do with the silk lining) and look down in the bag. If I see a head I check in another couple of days. If not job is done. Only once have I had to go back and respray and that was when I got several butterfly migrations the same year and that was only on about half the trees.

Mark

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I believe (let me know if I'm wrong), that another name for these is 'tent catapillars'. If so, they are classified as a nuisance and not a pest. In other words, they don't kill the tree that's their host. We have many of these every year, and I've never seen a tree that didn't recover the next year. However, if I had ornamental trees and/or was concerned about appearances, I would treat for them.

They make a bag and it hangs off small limbs. The bag is silk
lined and very tough....hard to pull one apart using both hands,
thumb and index fingers. It is decorated with leaves and on
cedars (cedar leaves are short and slender), little bluish balls
appear also that show up on the female gender tree for that
year....different years, different trees are girls.

They come up out of the bag to eat the leaves off the host tree.
If you catch them out eating you will see the head protruding out
of the bag and the incisors just making a mess of the tree.

Since trees take in CO2 and release O2 and in doing so grow, if
you remove enough of the leaves the tree can't make the
transition adequately and it will die. 200-300 bag worms on a
20' cedar in time will and do kill them. No brag, just fact and
that's the population density I get when the butterflies
hybernate. So, for me, take that number x the 160 trees I have
and you are talking about a lot of worms.

On other trees, I have no idea as I never see them on anything
but cedars and they are on there by the 100's. They are
obviously butterfly larvae as you don't have any until the
butterflies migrate in the spring. The ones that get me are the
smaller ones, like the one that's tomato worm green with the big
dot on each wing, or the yellow ones of the same size. When 2
or 3 groups of them migrate, I have 2 or 3 sessions with the
worms.

HTH,
Mark