Bag worms and gypsy moths cause deforestation. Once you recognize them, you'll see hundreds, maybe thousands of tiny eggs in one infected bush or tree. Watch this video again and you'll see the young larvae that have just hatched. They start from an egg. When they hatch, they come down a single strand of silk, and start collecting pine needles one by one. You'll see single pine needles hanging from the bush. For years, I thought these were pine needles hanging from furry dog hair after my dog brushed against them to itch her back. But now I realize that she probably carried the little larvae into the house on her back (gag...moving on). As the worms get bigger, they pull lots of pine needles around them, resembling pine cones. Which is what I thought they were for years. But pine cones don't move by themselves, as these do.
Killing and Preventing Bag Worms
During my midnight research, when I wasn't torturing my friends with pictures and videos of bag worms, I learned that the only way to kill bag worms was to burn or drown them. Natural predators include assassin bugs who, according to this pest control company, can insert a long needle into the cocoon, as well as the Ichneumonid wasp and tiny types of spiders that build almost solid-looking webs across bushes to catch dropping, unsuspecting larvae. But the infestation had outnumbered the natural predators, and my scissors, pruning shears, and I needed to get involved.
When the bag worms were still too much and started moving over into my cosmo flowers and other evergreen bushes, I called in local landscaper Kristen VanCott, of Spring Water Landscaping, to remove the most infested bush, and spray the other two with neem oil to prevent the bag worms from spreading to the other bushes. This worked last year, and I neglected to treat them this year. I didn't realize I needed to... Until I saw all of the tiny larvae dangling, and bigger ones getting fatter and fatter as the spring went on. Home Depot or Amazon, here I come to order neem oil, depending on what new information I learn from tonight's workshop. Bag worms or gypsy moths, I'm eager to learn about and implement whichever treatment plan will keep the creepy-crawlies to a minimum. See you there!
Moth prevention, at least at the pantry and food moth level, is pretty preventable. You remove the food source. You change the way you store your grains. (No, putting them in plastic bags isn't enough and may even create an environment that pantry moths seek out because plastic bags can make things moist and moisture is what moth larvae seek out. Maybe that's why spices in plastic jars seem more prone to moth infestations than those in glass jars, but that's just my theory.)
Gypsy moths, bag worms, pantry moths, food moths, they are all no good to the things we need. Maybe for birds who eat them, or spiders who live for building webs beneath the dropping larvae, but sometimes those natural predators have too much food, and overpopulation of moths can cause problems.
Check out how many bag worms this guy got in this video...
