Consult the labels for dosage rates and safety precautions. Chestnut weevils, Curculio caryatrypes and C. sayi. The females, which have a longer snout, lay eggs inside nuts once the burrs start to open. Their snout has tiny but powerful mandibles at its end that is used for feeding on the nut and in preparing a hole in which the female can lay her egg. The legless larvae develop while tunneling through the nutmeat, emerging from fallen nuts to burrow in soil to complete development.
Sanitation is an important means of control.
Collect nuts fallen nuts on a daily basis and hold them in a container from which the larvae cannot escape. Consult the labels for dosage rates and safety precautions. Clearwing chestnut moth, Synanthedon castaneae . This species was thought to have disappeared with mature stands of the American chestnut, but has been found infesting chestnuts in our breeding program. The larvae of this moth tunnel in the bark and cambium, and if numerous could cause serious injury to the tree.