clemsonfor
Super Member
i dont see bagworms often, i was thinking tent catipillars but those pod things look nothing like the tent the tent pillers make. Told ya i dont know my yard tree pests.
What's killing my pine trees?
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ToadHill
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You might try spraying with a heavy dorment oil. I will coat the insect and bag and stop it's ability to breath as insects breathe through holes in their exoskelitin(sp).
Pilot
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Bagworms! That's a new one on me and I have been a forester since '75, but only in the west and I see these critters don't go west of Nebraska. Learn something every day...
arrabil
Veteran Member
If I knew more about tree names I could tell you which ones are surviving and which ones are dying but all I can say is that certain species of pines are all turning brown and dying around here. And you're not too far away.
Looks like some kind of blight to my untrained eye. One guy near me kept replacing the dying ones with ones of the same type that would just die the next year. He switched to a different species last year and they're doing good.
I've been watching it spread.... it was miles from my house three/four years ago. Now the ones on my road are dying out. You have no idea how happy I am to have the "good" species on my property.
Looks like some kind of blight to my untrained eye. One guy near me kept replacing the dying ones with ones of the same type that would just die the next year. He switched to a different species last year and they're doing good.
I've been watching it spread.... it was miles from my house three/four years ago. Now the ones on my road are dying out. You have no idea how happy I am to have the "good" species on my property.
MossRoad
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Bagworm it is... and I seem to have it bad.
Thank you!
You have to spray the tree now, while they are active. Once the little bugger pupates inside its fortress the insecticide will be less effective. It will lay over until the moth hatches and lays more eggs. I used a pump up tank sprayer, stood on a ladder and was able to do my 35' blue spruce. The liquid sevin worked and I only had a few the next year and sprayed them again. I found just a few on other pine trees, but that spruce had thousands. I lost a 6' x 6' patch at the bottom of the tree that will never come back. Fortunately, I figured it out and killed them before they got the whole tree, but the tree looks ugly with that big chunk missing from on the street side. We may end up cutting it down anyway.
clemsonfor
Super Member
If these are newly planted trees its probly cause there planting them at the wrong time of year. Its to hot and not raining enought to transplant pines. Pines need to be planted in the late fall to winter, around my part here in SC i would not plant anylater personally than march and that really is to late. IN NJ you may get away into april? Pines also suffer from several bark beetles and other things. The uneducated call them all pine beetles. The worst and one that will spread like wildfire is The spp. pine beetle, or southern pine beetle or western pine beetle. It bores into the bark and lays eggs in cambium and when the larvae hatch they feed in the cambium layer of the tree then fly away to attack other adjacent trees as this cysle repeats your trees die. The beetle is the indirect killer, they have a fungus that they bring with them which then is introduced to the tree and it slowly chokes it off, by stopping watter frow and nutriet flow from the roots to the needles. These are identifed by pitch tubes or resin mounds on the tree truck up to a height of around 20 feet. They look like way globs and have a hole the size or smaller than a grain of rice, which is the size of the beetle. If you take the bark off a tree they are identified by the "S" shaped galleries that the larvae leave in the cambium layer. The S. pine beetle attacks all souther pine species some more than others with longleaf and slash pines being most resistant. They also attacked stressed trees first, wether it be from root compaction fire damage, drought, to wet, lightinig strike, other insect attacts like Ipps (see below) to much competition. The species that they effect all southern pines, including sand pine, virginia, pine Loblolly pine shortleaf pine , longleaf pine, slash pine, sonderegger pine, maybe pitch pine. And possibly others but this is all i would eveer see them in. These will sometimes go on for years just spreading from a central point like cancer till they either are controlled by natural bug preditors and or the stress is releived like if in drought you get rain. Or they hit a nautural buffer like a lake, highway, or man clearcuts them infront of the advance. A "hot" spot can move at the pace of a hundred feet or so in all directions from the center. Pine beetles are cyclical and go in cycles of 5-7 years between the epidemic years, 2001 was our last epidemic year around here. Im holding my breath wating on the little suckers. They were rampet killing trees that usually are not touched by them.
The Western pine beetle in the last 5 years has decimated the western forrest from what i have seen and been tolk by a friend who elkhuts CO. Says every pine you see there is dead.
The other less destructfull ipps engraver beetle also attacks southern pines. All the same species. Similar invasion technique but higher on the tree, pitch tubes will be higher on the bole (tree trunk in laymens terms) These are more random of progression sometimes 3 trees sometimes 300 trees. They will stop on their own usually with little damage unlike SPB (southern pine beetle). They hit a stand more like a shotgun with smaller spots peppered acrosss an area unlike the cancer like spread of SPB. Ips trees are identified by flagging (dieing) of upper branches and top dieback first. These are not as worry some so im not going to cover them as much. To control you can just cut the infected trees a buffer is really not needed but most will put a tiny one on them.
No this is not a WIKI quote or pirated from some paper or university site. I am a forester so i know more about them than the normal landowner, this is just common knowledge amoung the profession. I have left many things out about both but they really are irrelevant in this discussion and this is already a long post.
Nate
USACE Resident Forester
BS Clemson University
MFR Clemson University
clemsonfor
Super Member
Even though im a forester who makes a living off of pine, i would not plant one within 120 feet of my house or keep one within that distance. They have bad habits of snapping off or blowing over. I dont want one cutting my house in two.
MossRoad
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The bagworms crawl along the branches and eat EVERYTHING THAT IS GREEN. All of it!
DanD78
Platinum Member
Looks like the bag worms I have had in the past. I spray with Ortho Systemic bug spary and it kills them pretty quick.
Dan
Dan
