Organic Treatment for Bagworms

Bagworms tend to eat needles of evergreen trees.

Those destructive pests are at it again, spinning their cocoons in the trees on your property and eating their way down, sometimes destroying entire groups of trees before you can stop them. Bagworms are destructive pests that spin very tough, baglike cocoons around themselves, usually camouflaging the sacs with bits of bark and twigs of the same color as the bark they're hanging from. Bagworms feed on the needles of evergreen trees, usually starting at the top and working their way down until the tree is largely brown and dying. Use organic methods to protect your environment and eradicate bagworms.

Things You'll Need

• Shasta daisies or asters
• Gardening gloves

Instructions

1. Check your evergreen trees in the fall, when other trees have lost their leaves, and you'll be able to see brown and dead patches on the trees better. Female bagworms can't fly, so they will stay on or near the trees they began on, and continue to eat.

2. Pull each bagworm off of the tree by hand. The sacs can be strong, but sturdy, so they may require garden gloves and quite a tug to get off. Continue working around the tree until all bagworms you see are removed from the tree.

3. 

   Shasta daisies attract bugs that feed on bagworms.

   Submerge bagworms into a bucket or tub of water to drown them. Simply pulling them from the tree and leaving them on the ground will usually result in the larvae caterpillars inching back onto the trees and continuing their destruction.

4. Plant asters or shasta daisies near your evergreen trees once you have rid your trees of all the bagworms you can find. Shasta daisies are a hardy flowering type of plant that attract parasitic bugs -- types of bugs that feed on larvae such as bagworms.

5. Don't kill the ichneumonid wasps your daisies attract. These aren't stinging wasps as you might think of, but are harmless to people, and will feed on harmful larvae nearby.

Tips & Warnings

• Inspect your evergreen trees in late fall or prior to spring to ensure they are not infested by bagworms. At this time of year, the sacs have browned and are easier to see against green foliage and gray bark.

References

• Ohio State University Extension: Bagworm and Its Control
• NC State University Cooperative Extension: Bagworms
• Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences: Bagworms
• Texas A&M University Horticulture Extension: Ichneumonid Wasps: An Overview