Around here they cut them off and burn them. I'm interested in
any other
way to treat them. What is BT?
I suspect Craig isn't concerned with them in webs, but the
individuals that drop from the webs and start chewing on his
bonsai. It's the webs that burn, not the caterpillars. It
usually is enough to just break open the webs. Birds LOVE the
caterpillars.
BT is Bacillus thuringensis, a bacterium which infects
caterpillars. They stop feeding, some time after infection and
starve. It is "organic" in that it only affects targeted
animals/critters. Another version of BT goes after mosquito
larvae and is the ingredient in "mosquito dunks." There are
other strains that go after Japanese beetles, etc.
Read my "Bugs and Bonsai" on our website in the "Knowledge Base."
Jim Lewis - - Tallahassee, FL - Only where
people have learned to appreciate and cherish the landscape and
its living cover will they treat it with the care and respect it
should have - Paul Bigelow Sears.
Thanks, sounds similar in action to the Nosema locustae I'm using for
grasshoppers which plague us in NW Arkansas much the same as locusts.
I usually put my trees in an enclosure that I've been using for a couple
years as cold storage with chicken house curtains in the winter and screen
in the summer. That enclosure has been the only sure fire method of insect
control that I've used so far.
Not only do I have pests like cattle but now a pygmy goat that have worked
for alternative methods for pruning. Now if I could only teach them to have
aesthetic tastes.....
--
katie
zone 6b