Tent Caterpillar Eggs?

[CrazyEd]

I found about 15 of these today while pruning my 125ish fruit trees. I removed them all and from what google is showing me it does look like tent caterpillar eggs.

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[homerj]

Yup, tent cat egg masses for sure

 

[Prof.Kent]

Yes, for sure

 

[NE PA QDM]

Glad you found them early.

 

[mikmaze]

I remember as a kid driving around in spring, cutting tents off trees and bringing them to a big bonfire of other sticks loaded with tents, good times.

 

[BobinCt]

Now elaborate Ed since your good with the trees. If we see these now, how do we go about getting rid of them ? Just hand pick them off a tree and throw them in a bag? Now that you have them now and confirmed they are tent cat masses , what else will you do differently this spring, summer and fall than if you hadn’t had any? Just trying to learn something . Thx

 

[CrazyEd]

So we typically find a few tents per season, less than 10 a season for sure. I'll be honest, I've gotten away from spraying since I started planting fruit trees. If I do spray it's typically reactionary spraying. I dont have time to do it, and, I just don't like spraying the chemicals into the environment. We spend a lot of time establishing native wildflowers and plants and pollinator habitat in general, so I feel spraying goes against one of our primary habitat goals. I have focused on disease resistant varieties and this is a wild life orchard, I dont really care what the fruit looks like.

I wouldn't mind looking into a more earth friendly spraying program if one exists and I find more time in my busy schedule, but frankly i just dont see that happening anytime soon.

For now, I cut them out where possible or scraped them off. Ideally i would have hauled them off and burned them, but there was close to 14" of snow on the ground so nothing was easy yesterday, I just tossed them on the ground. Hopefully they turkeys and other migratory birds find them and eat them if / when they hatch.

 

[BobinCt]

Thx Ed. I like the pics so I know how to identify now.

 

[PoorSand]

If a guy can dip the pods in a jug of vegetable oil, that smothers the eggs. Once they hatch, I have a sprayer to kill them, but if I am driving around and spot a brand new test forming, I spray the young ones with a can of DEET mosquito repellent. It knocks them dead in under a minute. I have had bad experience though if any DEET gets on apple tree leaves.