Forest Tent Caterpillars Anyone?
 

:thumbdown:

Many of our beautiful trees on our one acre lot are 'infested' with forest tent caterpillars. Uggg. Have any of you had this problem?

We found some 'nests' or at least spots where there were hundreds clumped together and cut them out as much as we could (had a nice fire going....)

Any advice? The internet says different things.... from getting chemicals, to just calling it a bad year and doing nothing. I am leaning toward calling it a bad year, unless somebody has a success story with a benign solution!

Thanks in advance!

I poke the nests and then spray with permethrin . If you don't kill them, they will kill your trees. Your choice. My neighbor chose to ignore them, they killed all his apple trees. My apples are as big as golf balls from all the rain and getting rid of the tent caterpillars earlier in the spring. Going to be a bumper crop for apples this year.

I don't believe tent caterpillars will kill your trees. I try to simply prune and destroy the infected branches that I can reach.

My DH rolls newspapers into a long tube, sets fire to the end, and holds under the nest. He burns them out...no damage to tree or environment.

i have cut them off the tree and then burn them. if too high i spray with seven

My husband sprayed them after talking to the pest control people. We do have to be careful of fire hazards here, especially this year. He had to spray twice with each spraying about a month apart. They have not come back. Trees are healthy.

A friend had a cabin "up north" and needed an umbrella to go to the out-house because of all the caterpillars falling from the trees. LOL

We will get the ladder out and try it!

I was told to use chemicals & tried that but it worried me, using those toxic chemicals. A friend of mine told me to
fill a spray bottle with water, add some dish soap & spray the soapy water on them. Apparently the suds suffocate them & they die. Tried it & it worked for me. You can see them falls out of the trees. Felt a lot better using dish soap as opposed to chemicals. Worth a try.

And here I thought I'd discovered one bug that we don't have here. Wrong! They are supposedly in Texas, too. I guess I just haven't run across them in my area yet.

Callen, a lot of pests can be gotten rid of with dish soap and water. I've done that for the bugs on my hibiscus and it works like a charm and I don't have to worry about using toxic chemicals around the dogs.