distroying gypsy moth egg clusters

[Sawyerfortyish]

Went to my deer stand today to check it out for opening day on monday. It's in a big rock oak(chestnut oak) tree and it's just covered with moth egg clusters. I always just wiped them off and let them fall on the ground and figured that was the end of them and they won't hatch. Someone told me that I'm wasting my time and they will still hatch Is this true? I just thought being on the wet ground covered with snow and being hit with the full force of weather that would stop them from hatching. Boy if they all hatch there won't be a leaf left on any trees.

[Furby]

From what I've seen, some can still hatch after you wipe them off.
I always used a small propane torch and fried the masses.
Wasn't cheap, and you can only get to the ones you can reach.
Probly not a good idea to do it on thin bark trees.

[Sawyerfortyish]

Lets see I got 410 acres 300 of it woodland if I tourch all the egg masses I can reach I'll be ten years older and broke from buying propane by the time I finish :D It just made me feel better wiping them off the tree you know like out of sight out of mind.

[Phorester]

Yep, those little boogers will still hatch on the ground.  If you mash one of the egg masses between your fingers you will see that the eggs are hard as BBs.  Pretty tough.  To destroy the eggs you have to dunk'em in kerosene or something similiar, burn'em, etc. For low numbers of eggs, and low on the trees, the egg masses can be painted with kerosene.  Just dab it onto the mass itself.  Don't slather it on and let it run down the trunk.  That will injure the tree more than the GM caterpilliars.  This obviously won't work for you, SAWYER, with that large of an infestation, just explaining it a little in case somebody else wants to try it on a few egg masses. 

What putting them on the ground does is to expose them to mice and other ground critters that will eat some of them.  It will also expose the tiny caterpilliars (1/16" long when they hatch, and very fragile) to other ground predators next spring when they hatch, and since they have to crawl farther to get to a tree, some of these tiny caterpilliars will die before they reach one. This is not a control method for GM, since the number of eggs are far greater than the ground animals can consume.  But they'll get a few......, out of the 1000s there.  :

[tonich]

This moth is commonly spread in our oakeries.

If you have small scale of attack, wiping eggs off can work – there are some natural predators, parasites and bacteria on the eggs, which will reduce their number. Also, it will prevent from carryng off the young caterpillars by wind towards new trees, since they stay on the clusters for a few days, once hatched.
And you can treat the eggs with kerosene or something similar, burn, just as Phorester described.

Here, in BG it appears that heavy infestations are every 5-8 years. Then the efficient control is supposed to aim the young caterpillars, with insecticides or bacterial fluids.

[Ron Wenrich]

Yep, wipe them off and let the snow cover them.  All that does is insulate them from the harsh weather.  Leaving them exposed to the cold weather may kill some of the eggs, but don't count on it.

Here's the depressing part.  You can only see about 5% of the egg masses.  Go out and turn over a few rocks and some of those downed limbs.  They crawl in a lot of small crevices and lay eggs. 

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[SwampDonkey]

As kids we were introduced to cattail torches. We took a pale of diesel and soaked the cattail seed heads over night in the pale. We lit them and went around in spring to burn hatched army worm colonies on apple trees and cherry trees. Their egg masses were light gray and surrounded the twig if you were to go looking before leaf out. They have not been too bad here for over 20 years. There seem to be web worms moving in now and mostly along streams and river banks. I did get one colony in a apple tree in the yard this year.

[Sawyerfortyish]

Sd those sound like what we call tent caterpillars. We had two hatchings of them this year one in May/June and again in late August/early September never seen that before. With the Gypsy moths in between. Some of the hill sides looked like winter time.

[Stephen1]

We use simple dish soap for the larvae of the gypsy moth, scrape what we can off the oaks around the cottage, not much we can do about the ones in the bush but it does help to keep the cottage oaks with leaves on them. if you scrape them off and are so they under the snow it is like having an insulated blanket placed over them

[SwampDonkey]

Sawyerfortyish, the later ones are webworms. They are related, as are forest tent caterpillars.