How to Use sawfly in a Sentence

sawfly

noun
  • The rose slugs are the larvae of the sawfly.
    — Rita Perwich, San Diego Union-Tribune, 4 Apr. 2026
  • Some sawflies are host specific to one type of plant, while others feed on a range of plants.
    — Arricca Elin Sansone, Southern Living, 10 Sep. 2025
  • This may remove pupating sawflies, says Khan.
    — Arricca Elin Sansone, Southern Living, 10 Sep. 2025
  • In some places, some types, such as hibiscus sawflies, may have up to six generations.
    — Arricca Elin Sansone, Southern Living, 10 Sep. 2025
  • Leaf miners are the larvae of various beetles, flies, moths, and sawflies.
    — oregonlive.com, 7 June 2019
  • Sawfly Also called rose slugs, sawflies are stingless, wasp-like insects.
    — Arricca Elin Sansone, Southern Living, 24 Aug. 2025
  • Sawfly Also called rose slugs, sawflies are stingless, wasp-like insects.
    — Arricca Elin Sansone, Southern Living, 15 Apr. 2026
  • Like aphids and other soft-bodied pests, sawfly larvae will dry out or suffocate when covered in these products.
    — Arricca Elin Sansone, Southern Living, 10 Sep. 2025
  • The sawfly larva feeds on the needles of conifers, including the lower portion, which contains resin from the branch.
    — Mark Fischetti, Scientific American, 25 June 2024
  • Bristly rose slug The bristly rose slug is the most common rose slug in California and is the larva of a sawfly.
    — Rita Perwich, San Diego Union-Tribune, 5 Apr. 2025
  • The wormlike larvae of the larch sawfly stripped almost all the adult trees of their needles in the mid to late 1990s.
    — Ned Rozell, Alaska Dispatch News, 24 June 2017
  • Some gooseberry sawflies can go through four generations during a summer.
    — Jeff Lowenfels, Anchorage Daily News, 13 July 2018
  • Refer to our sawflies page for more information and images of other common sawfly larvae in gardens.
    — Miri Talabac, Baltimore Sun, 17 Aug. 2023
  • The larvae of sawflies look very similar to caterpillars, though there are subtle differences.
    — Miri Talabac, Baltimore Sun, 8 June 2023
  • How To Identify Sawflies Adult sawflies resembles bees or small wasps.
    — Arricca Elin Sansone, Southern Living, 10 Sep. 2025
  • This is an important distinction because not all of the low-risk insecticides used on caterpillars work on sawflies.
    — Miri Talabac, Baltimore Sun, 17 Aug. 2023
  • For example, it’s known that at about 100 growing degree days, redbud trees flower and pine sawfly larvae emerge.
    — Beth Botts, Chicago Tribune, 11 Apr. 2026
  • The problem in asking me is that there are all manner of reasons why a spruce tree would have needles turn brown, from sawflies and budworms to fungi, viruses, mites and bad weather.
    — Jeff Lowenfels, Alaska Dispatch News, 22 Sep. 2017
  • The primary insect responsible for chewing rose leaves this time of year is a sawfly – in particular, one of a few species of roseslug sawfly.
    — Miri Talabac, Baltimore Sun, 8 June 2023
  • Starting from the head and working back, sawfly larvae have six or more pairs of abdominal prolegs (located in the middle portion of their bodies).
    — Arricca Elin Sansone, Southern Living, 10 Sep. 2025
  • Some are inadvertently introduced pests like the European pine sawfly.
    — Dawn Pettinelli, Hartford Courant, 15 June 2024
  • Concerned residents have sent lots of photos of yellow jackets, bumblebees, Elm sawflies and other yellow and black insects.
    — David Williams, CNN, 27 May 2020
  • On the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, a scale of relative agony caused by sawflies, wasps, bees and ants, the sweat bee comes in at the lowest level of pain.
    — oregonlive, 10 Apr. 2019
  • There are no reports of the elm zigzag sawfly having caused the death of any elm trees, and species management options remain an area of study, per ODNR.
    — Zach Mentz, cleveland, 6 Sep. 2023
  • And this pungent tune helps keep Hoplocampa testudinea, the European apple sawfly, from being eaten.
    — Karen Hopkin, Scientific American, 31 Oct. 2021
  • Adult sawflies emerge in May and June (first generation) and late July and August (second generation).
    — oregonlive, 10 May 2020
  • Lowenstein says pesticides like insecticidal soap or Neem oil can be used to kill sawfly larvae, or they can be easily picked off the plants directly and thrown into a bucket of soapy water.
    — Kylie Martin, Detroit Free Press, 21 June 2024
  • Other plant families have their own leaf miners with the host species and characteristic form of the larva’s leaf squiggles helping to identify the insect species; this includes the larvae of some sawflies and wasps.
    — Rita Perwich, San Diego Union-Tribune, 5 Aug. 2023
  • Legions of professional entomologists fret about sawflies, ambrosia beetles, scale insects and leafhoppers.
    — Adrian Higgins, Washington Post, 7 Aug. 2019
  • Regardless of which species of sawfly is attacking your plants, options for control include hand picking, insecticidal soap, Spinosad or other insecticides labeled for sawflies.
    — Dawn Pettinelli, Hartford Courant, 15 June 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'sawfly.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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