South Carolina is experiencing a record level of fall webworms

Hello, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. The massive number of fall webworms we’re having this year, record numbers, get some people upset about their eating so many leaves on their trees. They rarely do much damage, and please, please, please don’t get on a ladder and try to remove them. If you want to poke holes in the webs, wasps and some birds will profit from eating them. Wasps and yellow jackets feed meat to their larvae who in turn secret sugary liquids the adults consume; a web full of caterpillars is a lot of food. Cuckoo birds break into the webs and can eat a hundred at a time – the spiny protrusions form pellets in the birds’ stomachs and they can cough them up or sometimes empty their stomach completely after digesting the energy rich caterpillars.