Insecticides

Foresters, municipalities, and state agencies may conduct spraying in heavily affected areas next spring, when the caterpillars are small. The most common spray to combat LDD caterpillars is a bacteria called Bacillus thuringiensis, usually called Bt. Individuals can also use bacterial or chemical sprays, but this can be cost-prohibitive for many homeowners.

Tree protection

If you have a few trees in particular that you’d like to help protect, you can wrap the tree all the way around in duct tape and apply a sticky substance to the tape ring. Many caterpillars are hesitant to cross the tape and climb the tree. When the caterpillars get bigger, they often drop to the ground during the day, to avoid predators, climbing back up the trees at night. So you can wrap a burlap or paperbag ring around your trees, folding the top over to create a kind of skirt around the trees. The caterpillars may hide in the folds of your “tree skirt” during the day. You can then collect the caterpillars and kill them. It may also be beneficial to water trees that are overstressed, helping to mitigate the effects of drought and encourage refoliation in the latter part of the summer.

Kill the pests one-by-one

Or by the hundreds! While it may seem like a Sisyphean task, every caterpillar killed now is one that does not reproduce. If you want to try this route, get a bucket of soapy water and drop individual caterpillars, pupae in their cocoons, or whitish egg masses (these appear later in the summer and into fall/winter) into the bucket overnight to kill them.

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