Gnarly pitch moth larvae - do you deal with these?

[M.D. Vaden]

Sometimes I find a lot of these in pines, other times I don't.

They are prevalent on some shore pines in Oregon. Manually squishing or flicking of the larvae seems the most practical, although a bit messy and time consuming.

They are not too bad, unless they damage the top of a limb, or where the limbs meets the trunk.

Do you folk have any battles with these in your area?

 

[treeseer]

Install birdhouses.

Install bird feeders.

Plant shrubs for bird food and cover.

Pick em and go fishin, til the birds find em.

 

[M.D. Vaden]

It actually crossed my mind - jokingly - to train a parrot or other bird to get them.

But I've never seen bird pecking holes around these. The larvae are covered in a "armor" of pitch. I removed a big glob of pitch to expose the larvae in the image.

So I don't think that woodpeckers target these.

 

[treeseer]

SMart bug making use of healthy trees. Pines here in summer don't pitch much; drought stress.

It'd be interesting to count the harvest and the time taken in each tree, for estimating purposes (if you have to estimate)

 

[M.D. Vaden]

SMart bug making use of healthy trees. Pines here in summer don't pitch much; drought stress.

It'd be interesting to count the harvest and the time taken in each tree, for estimating purposes (if you have to estimate)

Actually, I find it such a nuisance to deal with, I'd never promote the service.

Fortunately, it's mainly in shore pine, and most of them are not very tall. I only remove the worst in a tree. Ones located where they weaken the most. At most, I'll only remove up to 30 on tree, often just 3 to 10.

It might take me a couple of minutes to 15 minutes.

It's a real mess. It gums up whatever I use with pitch, even if it's just a screwdriver.

I hate it, when the pitch from these things is clustered around branch collars where limbs need to come off for routine pruning. I hate to leave a stub, so I'm often having to clean the saw blade with something that will disolve the pitch.