Bagworm Control in Omaha
The insect that quietly kills arborvitae hedges in this metro. Treatable for about three weeks in late spring, and close to untreatable outside them.
Free Evergreen Check
Those are not cones on your arborvitae
All 36 problems we treat
The bag is built from your tree
Each one is spun silk clad in bits of the host's own foliage, which is exactly why they disappear against an arborvitae until there are hundreds.
There is a caterpillar inside it
It feeds with its head out and the bag dragged behind. Everything it does happens from inside that case, and the case is the problem.
It never leaves
The female never grows wings and never leaves her bag. She lays inside it and dies there, which is why an infestation stays on the same plant and builds.
A brown bag in winter is not empty
It holds several hundred eggs waiting for next spring. Pulling those off in February is the cheapest control there is.
Not sure whether what you are seeing is bagworm? Send a close photo and we will tell you.
One narrow stretch of the year does all the work
Omaha tree care calendarDrawn to proportion across one year
Bags hanging, eggs inside
Fall to April
Nothing to spray, because nothing is feeding. This is the stretch where the useful job is picking bags off by hand and burning or bagging them.
The hatch, and the only real window
Late May to mid June
The young emerge and build tiny bags while they feed. They are exposed, small, and easy to kill. This is roughly three weeks and it is the whole treatment.
Getting harder every week
Late June to July
The bags thicken and the caterpillar spends more time closed up inside. Treatment still helps, and it stops working well long before it stops being sold.
Sealed in, and past treating
August onward
The bag is closed for pupation and nothing sprayed on the outside reaches what is in it. Anybody quoting a bagworm spray in September is selling you a truck roll.
Dates move with the spring. We schedule off degree days and what the bags are actually doing, not off the calendar.
Booked ahead, the visit lands inside the window. Booked in July, it mostly does not.
What they go for in this metro
Plant health care
Arborvitae
The classic host in this metro, and the one that dies from it. Evergreens do not refoliate stripped wood.
Juniper and red cedar
Bags blend into the scale foliage completely. Usually found by touch rather than by eye.
Spruce
Tolerates more damage than arborvitae, but a heavy year on a young spruce still leaves permanent holes.
Honeylocust and maple
They will feed on broadleaf trees too. Ugly, and far less serious, because deciduous trees releaf.
Anything downwind of an infested plant
The young balloon on silk threads in the wind. One untreated hedge seeds a whole street.
An arborvitae hedge can lose a whole plant in one season. It is worth a look before May.
What a treated hedge looks like the following year
“We lost two arborvitae before anyone told us what the little cones were. They treated the rest at the end of May and the hedge has been clean since.”
313+ Google reviews
Voted Best of Omaha, and rated across tree work, plant health care and storm response by homeowners in every town we serve.
Read the reviewsThe job you can do yourself in February
Talk to an arborist
Every brown bag still hanging on a plant in winter holds several hundred eggs, and none of them are going anywhere until spring. Pulling those bags off is the cheapest and most effective bagworm control there is, and it is entirely within reach on a hedge you can walk along.
Cut the silk band rather than yanking the bag. That band is wound tight around the twig and left in place it can girdle the growth it is on, which leaves a dead tip long after the insect has gone. What comes off goes in the trash, not on the ground under the plant.
None of that helps with what blows in from a neighbor's untreated hedge, which is why the evergreens on most properties end up on a schedule anyway. But a winter pass over what you can reach genuinely lowers the pressure, and it is the rare piece of tree advice that costs nothing.
Common questions about bagworms in Omaha
Ask us something elseWhat is a bagworm?
A caterpillar that builds a spindle-shaped case out of silk and pieces of the plant it is eating, and lives inside it for its entire life. On an arborvitae the bags look like small cones, which is why most people walk past them for a year or two before noticing. The insect feeds from inside the bag, and the bag is what makes it hard to kill.
When should bagworms be treated in Omaha?
Late May into mid June, when the eggs hatch and the young are small and exposed. That window is about three weeks. Before it, there is nothing feeding to kill; after it, the bags thicken and the caterpillars close up inside them. A treatment in August does essentially nothing, whatever it costs.
Can bagworms kill a tree?
On evergreens, yes, and quickly. Arborvitae, juniper and spruce do not push new needles from bare old wood, so anything the caterpillars strip stays stripped, and a heavy infestation can defoliate a whole arborvitae in a single season. On deciduous trees it is mostly cosmetic, because the tree leafs out again the following spring.
Do the bags need to be removed after treatment?
Not for the tree's health, but they do not fall off on their own and they look bad for a long time. If they are within reach it is worth pulling them off, and if they are old bags from a previous year, removing them takes several hundred eggs out of the yard at the same time.
Can I pick them off myself?
Yes, and in winter it is genuinely the best control available. Every bag you pull between fall and April is a few hundred eggs that never hatch. Cut the silk band rather than pulling, because the band is wound tight enough to girdle a twig if it is left. Put what you pick into the trash rather than on the ground.
Will they come back next year?
If there are untreated hosts nearby, some will. The young disperse by spinning a thread and letting the wind carry them, so a neighbor's infested hedge reseeds yours. That is the argument for having the evergreens on a schedule rather than reacting once the damage is visible.
If it is August, we will tell you to wait for spring rather than sell you a spray.
What goes with bagworm control
All services
Annual Tree & Shrub Program
The hatch window is three weeks wide. A schedule is what makes sure somebody is there for it.
Needle Cast Treatment
The other thing eating evergreens in this metro, on a different window.
Tree Planting
When an arborvitae hedge is stripped past recovery, replacement is the honest answer.
