It is the most important indirect pest of peach and nectarine in the mid-Atlantic region, where injury associated with Cytospora canker, pruning wounds, winter injury, and mechanical damage results in significant loss of production in older orchards. It may be common in black knot galls on plum.
Females are somewhat larger than males.
Both sexes are metallic blue-black with pale yellow bands on the second and fourth abdominal segments. Initially yellowish-brown in color, cocoons become rust brown as they age. In the spring, larvae resume feeding and complete their development beneath a thin layer of the bark surface from pink to shuck fall. Following construction of a cocoon, the larva changes to the pupal stage. In 3-4 weeks the pupa pushes through the cocoon and the thin bark surface, the pupal case splits open, and the moth emerges.