Subject: Neatly organized cluster…please help.
Location: Portland, Oregon
August 20, 2017 6:35 am
hello I am growing legal recreational cannabis in Portland Oregon and have been very careful to keep an eye on the plants for various caterpillar larvae and other pests, this morning I noticed something I’m fairly sure was not there yesterday and I could only find one example of this they are neatly clustered on the bottom of one leaf towards the top of the plant. Nice little perfectly round white eggs. Attached is a photo. I’m thinking Moth of some kind maybe? Biggest goal is to prevent these from investing my few plants. Any advice would b greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time.
Signature: Casey Koelbl
Dear Casey,
Eggs can be very difficult to correctly identify, but we do agree with you that these appear to be Moth Eggs, but an exact identification my be impossible. You can try isolating these eggs until they hatch, and then try raising them on fresh leaves until they get large enough to more accurately identify. According to I Love Growing Marijuana: “Caterpillars love marijuana plants! Corn Borer and Hemp Borer are the two most destructive caterpillars.” Two sites with advice we would question are Alchimia because it pictures a Spurge Hawkmoth Caterpillar, Hyles euphorbiae, NOT on Cannabis (see BugGuide for verification) and Royal Queen Seeds because it pictures a Black Swallowtail Caterpillar that feeds on plants in the carrot family, not on hemp. Dinafem advises: “Look out for butterflies: If you see any butterflies resting on your plants, try to chase them away because they could be laying eggs. If you have seen butterflies on your plants, you should start to be suspicious and check for caterpillars.” That sounds like ridiculous advice to us as we know of no butterflies with caterpillars that feed on Cannabis. We would recommend keeping a close eye on your plants. We recently created a new tag on our site What’s on my Woody Plant? so that we can address insects and other creatures found on Cannabis, and we hope to build this tag into a usable resource for growers so that they can distinguish between beneficial and problematic creatures they find on their crop.
P.S. If you decide to try to hatch these eggs, please send a followup image or two our way.
Thank u so much for responding, I seriously appreciate it! I’ll do just that and I am going to grab a friend, sit down and give them a very thorough examination top to bottom to make sure they aren’t trying to start a city. Again thanks a ton for the help. Have a great day!