A webworm caterpillar tent at Knox Mountain in Kelowna.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Ronan Deane

There are plenty of webs in the deciduous trees in Kamloops and the Okanagan this summer as webworm populations are high.

Often mistaken for tent caterpillars that appear in the spring, the webworm caterpillars appear in summer and fall and they come in cycles, hitting higher numbers every few years.

Katherine Shearer, owner at Out of the Box Horticulture in Kamloops, confirmed this is the biggest season for the caterpillars she’s seen in a while. 

“They (caterpillars) can do mass damage,” she said. “They eat the branches until the buds are dead. The tree does not always recover.”

Over in the Okanagan, Vancouver resident Ronan Deane saw a lot of the webs while hiking at Knox Mountain in Kelowna earlier this month.

“There were lots of them, most trees had at least one of those kind of web bunches about two by three feet wide, pretty big,” he said. “I’ve seen them over the years, some people told me they were spiders and if you fall into one you’ll get bitten, people come up with interesting stories. I think they (caterpillars) are fairly harmless, some people don’t like seeing them because they don’t look great.”

The fall webworm caterpillars secrete silk as they feed on foliage, and as they grow can enlarge the webs sometimes enclosing an entire tree according to the government of Canada website. While the infestations don’t have an immediate impact on trees, they can weaken the trees and make them more susceptible to other insects and diseases.

The webworm has one generation every year in Canada which is the northernmost part of its range. It will overwinter in the pupal stage in cocoons and emerge as a moth in spring where the female will continue the cycle laying eggs on the undersides of leaves.

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Residents can cut out and burn branches and leaves with nests on them or poke a hole in the web so the birds can eat them. Shearer uses an insecticide that affects the stomach enzymes of the caterpillars for her customers who are concerned about their affected trees. 

This video was taken at Knox Mountain in Kelowna by Ronan Deane. 

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