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Bagworms Are Destructive Pests

Bagworms are normally not visible in your Smithville, Missouri yard. They made their 2” homes in trees. In the fall worms use their homes to fill up 1,000 eggs. These eggs hatch in the spring and summer and use their silk to create a parachute-esque apparatus to fly away to their new homes—unsuspecting trees and build a new home for themselves. These pests hand out in their bags until late summer and early fall when the males emerge to mate as ashy-black moths with transparent wings.

Originally they are native to the Eastern United State, but they have dispersed across the Midwest. They will attack more than 120 different kinds of trees, but they prefer evergreens, such as junipers, cedars, and spruce trees. Once they move in they begin munching away at the trees. They will eat the foliage and buds and cause the branch tips to turn brown. If 80% of the tree turns brown, the evergreen will most likely die. On deciduous trees, the bagworms chew through the leaves and can cause defoliation.

Bagworms are normally not visible in your Smithville, Missouri yard.

If you can get rid of the worms, then the tree will most likely bounce back. They will also wrap silk around the twigs and these can kill the tree twigs later—not always an immediate response. The removal of bagworms is very tedious. You need to remove the bagworms by hand and destroy them. Make sure you cut through all of their silk too because that could strangle and kill your trees at a later date.

If you wish to avoid the intense work of removing the bagworms, give the landscape professionals at R&S Lawn Service a call and set up an appointment for them to take care of this nasty work.